Broker Blog

Things That Make Real Estate Sales Rewarding: Visit this link to see one of those things that makes real estate sales rewarding. This is a photo of Curtis Kind in our Cloverdale office with the handprints and words of thanks from the children who attend a local day care school. Curtis helped the owner of the day care facility find a new location – and they gave him this great poster as a big thank you. If you have “things that make real estate sales rewarding”, share them with me and I’ll pass them around.

Update to Policies and Procedures: Since roughly sixty percent of the transactions in the region in the past six months have been REO or Short Sale transactions (distressed sales), and since we are likely to continuing having them moving forward into 2009, and since not many agents have worked with these transactions in the past, we are adopting the following new policies:

REO and Short Sale Policies:

The pre-selling of REO/Short Sale listings is creating complaints from other agents and, more importantly, complaints from the public who believe that we are manipulating the sales process. To avoid this, the following policies shall apply to company REO and short sale transactions effective 11/1/08:

1. For REO and short sale listings, following the listing of the property in the MLS, there shall be a minimum of a forty eight hour waiting period prior to submitting an offer to the lender/owner that is generated on a dual agency basis (in-house offer). This will accommodate the proper exposure of the property to the agent community and the public. If a third party offer is presented from an agent outside the company within the 48 hour waiting period, and the lender’s policy is for us to submit offers as they are received, both the third party offer and the in-house offer may be submitted simultaneously.

2. Listing agents for REO/short properties may not undertake pre-listing (after a listing has been assigned but prior to obtaining a final listing agreement and price) marketing activities. In the normal course of discussing upcoming listings with colleagues, a listing agent may disclose the coming piece of business and potentially show it to in-house colleagues, but, no advertising may be undertaken, a sign shall not be placed, nor shall flyers be distributed on the property until the listing agreement is received from the lender. Lock boxes may be placed on the property, per lender direction for pre-listing vendor access, but no third party showings shall be undertaken until the property is officially listed and placed in the MLS. Any offers generated through the pre-exposure of the property to in-house agents shall be subject to the 48 hour waiting period described above.

3. The listing agent’s manager/broker shall be advised immediately if an offer is presented that involves either dual agency or single agent dual agency. No dual agency or single dual agency offer shall be submitted to the REO/Short sale owner without first reviewing the offer with the responsible manager/broker.

4. If multiple offers are received on REO/Short Sale listings, all offers shall be submitted to the lender unless they are patently frivolous. If an offer is going to be excluded from presentation, the agent shall review the details of this with your manager/broker as soon as possible. In no event, shall a Short Sale seller receive proceeds from an offer, in or out of escrow, unless approved in writing, in advance, by the lender(s) involved.

We will be working to see that something similar to these standards is adopted by the other firms in our market place with whom we are working.

A Billion: A friend based this by me the other day. I haven’t checked the math, but…

How many zeros are in a billion?
The next time you hear a politician (Republican or Democrat) use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about this. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

Now that the election is over – let’s see if we can back off on some of those billions.

Steve Harney: Thanks to Phyllis Brookshire for sending along her notes from Steve Harney’s presentation last week at Allen Tate’s Fall Convention in Raleigh, N. C. Some highlights are:
“The US government is “all in” betting on the housing market to bring the economy back. And we make our living in the housing market. 2009 should be a very good year”.
“How are you perceived by your clients? You need to be the expert. You have to know your stuff well enough to teach it, not just know it. And probably most importantly, it is our obligation to deliver the truth, not good news or bad news, but the truth to our clients”.
“For buyers, the bottom is here. Take advantage of current mortgage rates. Mortgage rates are expected to rise in the coming year. Let’s look at payments: $400,000 house @ 6% = $2,398.20 monthly payment
$375,000 house @ 7% = $2,494.88 monthly payment
Buyers are losing money “waiting for the bottom”.
“And what a good time to move up. If you are in a $300,000 home and take a 10% hit, you give up $30,000. If you move up to a $400,000 home and it is priced with a 10% savings, you save $40,000. Your buyer is $10,000 to the good!”
“We have to manage fear (low confidence) with our clients:
Step 1: Make them feel significant; I care; Paddle out to them to help them face to face.
Step 2: Make them feel safe; Tell them to hold onto your life raft.
Step 3: Make them feel certain; Tell them the plan.
You cannot skip to step 3. You have to work through the 3 steps”.

Check out Steve Harney's website at http://www.keepingcurrentmatters.com/


Consumer Confidence: Since I was in the new housing business in Chicago in the early 1970s, I have watched the Consumer Confidence Index as a guide to how the demand for housing is. The Consumer Confidence Index was first established in 1967 and last month, in October, it fell to an all time low. In light of this report, Steps 1, 2 and 3 above make absolute sense to me. With the election completed, and the theme of hope expressed throughout President-elect Obama’s campaign, lets look for last months index to be the bottom and see improvement beginning this month.

Closings: Closings for the period from 10/13 through 10/31 include: Sheila Whitney (Sonoma); Nicki Rector (Healdsburg); Lisa Ehreth (Healdsburg); Felice Torri (Sonoma); Isaac Raboy (Sonoma); David Barker (Napa); Tammi Mazziliano (Napa); Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma); Gina Clyde (Sonoma); Ann Amtower (Healdsburg); Randy Haak (Glen Ellen); Diane Litchfield (Sonoma); Hank Lane (Healdsburg); Patty Keiser (Glen Ellen); and Bill Streett (Sonoma). The following agents had two sales during this period: Mike Caselli (Sonoma); Dave Reynolds (Cloverdale); Linda Alioto (St. Helena); Robyn Makurak (Sonoma); Cheri Stanley (Napa) and Sheila Deignan (Sonoma). Jane and Ron Pavelka of our Cloverdale office had three closings and Susan Parker and Doug Del Fava had four closings during this period. Congratulations to all!

Birthdays: Birthdays in the past three weeks include Curtis Kind, Steve Ericson, Bob Beckstrom, Hank Lane and Susie Savino. Best wishes to all!

Leadership: I have in my quotations collection this quote from an unknown author: “An effective leader must be a master of two ends of the spectrum: Ideas at the highest level of abstraction and Actions at the most mundane level of detail”.

Through last weekend and the early part of last week we had a group called the Leadership Council visit our firm. There were twelve leaders of real estate companies around the country who took their valuable time to look at our firm and give us constructive feedback about how we can improve. I have to credit them with leadership as described above – they worked very hard and explored a large range of ideas on our behalf. My thanks go out to each of them.

From consolidating our “eight passwords list”, to putting exterior lighting on our Healdsburg listings, to staff and Earl and I being more present in each office on a regular basis - there are small refinements to make, larger changes to undertake and grand ideas to test. We will be working on all of these in the coming months. Thanks, too, to our staff and sales agents who participated in this assessment.

One more thing on leadership and character – In Wednesday’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote an article entitled “Why How Matters”. I encourage each of you to read it. The link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/opinion/15friedmanhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/opinion/15friedman.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=why%20how%20matters&st=cse&oref=slogin
“How” certainly matters as part of our company culture, and I am very proud of that and how our agents reflect that character.

Company Update: Wine Country Group Update for September, 2008

For the third quarter of 2008, The Wine Country Groups closings were 6% ahead of the rate for 2007. However, with the lower average price of the transactions that we are handling this year, our dollar volume is off by 30% year over year. New sales for the quarter were 76% ahead of the third quarter of 2007, so certainly there are buyers out there. Listings are also ahead of a year ago by 40%. Our available inventory numbers 206 listings vs. 231 at this time a year ago. Our average listing value is down from $900,000 in September, 2007 to $800,000 at the end of September of this year. We have 96 open escrows going into October vs. 67 a year ago, but the dollar volume is closer than the unit numbers, $96,000,000 compared to $67,000,000.

Our Napa office continues to do extremely well, closing 16 sides in September, ’08 compared to 3 a year ago. Nearly all of that volume is bank owned properties, or short sales, and they are doing a great job servicing these demanding accounts. We remain number one in market share in our Sonoma, Healdsburg and Cloverdale markets.

September Market Update: Sonoma County: Closed sales in the month of September reached 410 units – 46% more than in September, 2007, and 5% ahead of August, 2008 (392 units). New sales (443) in September, ’08 were 107% ahead of new sales (214) in September a year ago and 10% ahead of the pace (402) in August, ’08. I have not extracted the bank owned and short sale properties from these figures, but my guess is that at least 60% of the activity was in distressed properties. I will be looking into that analysis next week and give you the data.

The inventory of unsold homes (2140) was 23% lower than at this time a year ago when it stood at 2784 units. The county is down to 4.8 month supply of inventory based on new sales compared to a 13 month supply a year ago. So activity is certainly in a positive vein. The price per square foot ($258.00/sf) of sold homes was at it’s lowest point in four years and compared to $354.00/sf a year ago. Again, I have not yet determined the impact of distressed sales on that figure, but I am certain that is significant and that non-distressed sales enjoyed a far higher value than the distressed sales.

Sonoma Valley: Closed sales in the Sonoma Valley totaled 26 in September, 2008 compared to 16 in September, 2007 and 31 in August, 2008. New sales totaled 21 in September ’08 compared to 14 in September ’07 and 27 in August, ’08. The inventory of unsold homes totaled 202 in September compared to 255 a year ago – a 26% decrease. Within the inventory and sales, there is a large discrepancy between the average asking price ($1,000,000) and the average selling price ($558,000). This probably indicates that most of the sales are occurring at the lower end of the market and that the higher priced inventory is taking longer to sell. The median price of sold homes was $380,000 in September, 2008.

Healdsburg: There was a small positive bump in the Healdsburg market in that there were 13 new sales in September, 2008, compared to just 5 a year ago and 9 in August, 2008. Let’s hope that that trend continues. Unsold inventory remains ahead of a year ago (107 v. 101) bucking the overall trend in the County. The median price of sold homes remained the highest in the County at $528,000.

Cloverdale: Activity improved in Cloverdale in the month of September, 2008. There were 13 closed sales compared to 4 in September, ’07 and 6 in August, ’08. New sales also totaled 13 compared to 7 in September, ’07 and 11 in August, ’08. The inventory of unsold homes is down to 74 units compared to 106 a year ago and the market contains a 5.7 month supply of inventory based on the current pace of sales. The price per square foot of homes sold ($188/sf) compared to $246/sf a year ago and $177/sf last month.

Napa: The city of Napa closed sales (84) in September, 2008, were at a pace 75% ahead of the 48 homes that closed in September, ’07. New sales (96) in September, ’08 were 78% of the pace in September ’07 and equal to the pace of August, 2007. Inventory is down to 812 units – 10% lower than the 902 units that were available in September, 2007. There is an 8.5 months supply of unsold homes based on the new sales in September. The price per square foot ($320/sf) of sold homes in September, ’08 was 15% lower than the price per square foot ($376/sf) a year ago, but I have not factored out the distressed sales which are sure to have an impact.

American Canyon: Though we don’t have an office in American Canyon, we were the number one firm in market share in September, 2008. There were 26 closings in the month of September compared to 9 a year ago and 19 in August, ’08. There were 23 new sales in the month compared to 7 a year ago and 26 last month. Inventory is down to 120 units compared to 177 a year ago, but well ahead of the 98 last month. We believe that 100% of the sales in American Canyon in September were bank owned or short sale properties. I will do an analysis on the inventory next week to see how many of the properties for sale are distressed. The price per square foot of the sold properties has been steady over the past four months at $168/sf. It seems to have reached “the floor”.

Up Valley, Napa Co:  Like Healdsburg, Up Valley is the one of the two Wine Country markets where inventory remains above a year ago (181 to 160) and sales are slow.  There were 9 closings in September, 2008, compared to 14 in August, ’08 and 6 in September, ’07.  The average “Days on Market” for the homes that sold in September were 197 – so some older inventory was selling.  The sales price to original list price for these homes was 85%.  There were 5 new sales this past month compared to 15 in August and 8 in September, ’07.  Overall, a very slow time in Up Valley. 

Solano County: We are doing a good deal of business in western Solano County. All the business that we are doing is bank owned properties and the vast majority of all transactions in the county are distressed sales. Closings in September, 2008, 419 units, were 167% ahead of the sales (157) in September, ’07. New sales (536) were 264% ahead of the pace in September, ’07. Inventory was down 19% from a year ago and there is now just a 4.7 month supply of inventory compared to a 13 month supply a year ago. The median price ($261,000) for homes closed in September, ’08 was equal to that in August, ’08, and 31% below that of September, ’07. It will be interesting to see if the pace of foreclosures moderates in Solano County moving into the next few months.

I attended the Economic Summit for Solano County a few weeks ago and here are a few interesting, and sometimes startling, facts from the summit:
1. Construction material costs are down 5.6% over the past year
2. Lumber costs are at down 40% and the lowest in twenty years
3. The City of Fairfield usually issues 700+ housing permits per year. Through the end of August, 2008, they have issued 14 new housing permits.
4. The retail industry (all those discount stores along I-80) is really in the tank. The retail specialists listed a half dozen national retailers that have declared bankruptcy this year and another dozen that are in danger of doing so. I’m thankful not to be in that business!

Webstats: Our internet statistics continue to climb. Our site visits increased to 7,193 for the quarter ended 9/20/08 compared to 6,896 in the 2nd quarter. Visitors to our website came from 35 countries/territories around the world. 30% of our traffic comes from direct traffic, 48% from “referring sites” and 22% from search engines. If you have a property website, be sure to use the built in “Google Analytics” to evaluate your traffic.

Recognition: Lori Greenstein Bremner of our Orion Partners Commercial Property Management operations received the prestigious “State Lead Ambassador” award from the American Cancer Society in a Leadership Summit in Washington D. C. last week. Lori has been at the forefront of advocacy work for the American Cancer Society in California. She is a inspiring leader in this critical area affecting so many families in our towns, state and country. Thanks, Lori, for all that you do.

Closings: As mentioned in the last edition of the Broker Blog, I have some catching up to do on recognizing closings. For the period 9/1 to 10/10, the following agents had closings: First and foremost, Aimee Greco of our Napa office and Richard Hurst of our Cloverdale office had their first closing as FHA-WCG agents – wishing them many more! Other agents with closing include: Dee Grohmann (Healdsburg); Heidi Diamantini (Healdsburg); Mary Beth Foster (Sonoma); Hank Lane (Healdsburg); Michelle Delfino (Healdsburg); Kendra Martin (Sonoma); Constance Sharpe (Glen Ellen); Pat Brown (Sonoma); Frank Lazzarotto (Sonoma); Patty Keiser (Glen Ellen); Sheila Deignan (Sonoma); Charlene Schanzer (Healdsburg); Faeli Vyn (Napa); Debbie Hendershot (Healdsburg); Erin George (Sonoma); Joan Harrington (Sonoma); Mari Johnson (Sonoma); Randy Haak (Glen Ellen); and Felice Torri (Sonoma). The following agents had two closings during this period: Joyce Davison (Sonoma); Svetlana Ternovskaya (Napa); Holly-Evans White (St. Helena); Ron and Jane Pavelka (Cloverdale); Lisa Albertson (Sonoma). The following agents had three closings during this period: Jana Jones (Healdsburg); Penelope La Montagne (Healdsburg); Frank Trozzo (Napa); Bill Streett (Sonoma) and Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma). Linda Alioto of our St. Helena office closed four transaction sides during this period. Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker of our Kenwood office had six closings. David Barker of our Napa office had seven closings, and Cheri Stanley of our Napa office closed a whopping ten transactions in this five week period. Congratulations and well done by all!

Birthdays: Birthdays in the past week include Allyson Valente and Ryan De Mello.

Memorial: A memorial service for Dorothea Goehring was held on Saturday, October 18 at 2:00 pm at Faith Lutheran Church in Sonoma. Dorothea was a Realtor with Henry for much of the last thirty years – at times, being the top producer in the company. In my experience with Dorothea, she loved her clients and associates in the business, loved a party, and I will always remember her fondly.

A Tale of Two Markets: The article that I produced last month has been picked up by multiple newspapers and business journals. I appreciate the positive response and will continue to analyze this phenomenon in the months ahead. If you didn't have the chance to read the article – look down to the last broker blog posting.

Company Update:  For August, 2008, The Wine Country Groups closings were ahead of the rate for 2007, 61 closings vs. 46 a year ago. New sales for the month were 27% ahead of August, 2007, and new listings were equal to those of August, ’07. Our available inventory numbers 225 listings vs. 270 at this time a year ago. Our average listing value is down from $935,000 in August, 2007 to $751,000 at the end of August of this year. We have 117 open escrows going into September vs. 65 a year ago, but the dollar volume is closer than the unit numbers, $83,000,000 compared to $59,000,000.

Year to date numbers are reflective of the month. We are ahead in closings, year to date, but slightly behind in dollar volume. Our Napa office has been performing exceptionally, closing 110 sides in 2008 compared to 22 a year ago. The Sonoma office is holding its own with 164 closings compared to 170 last year. And our Kenwood office has been doing well closing 29 sales year to date compared to 21 a year ago.

We remain number one in market share in our Sonoma, Healdsburg and Cloverdale markets and we have now tripled our market share in the Napa Valley on a year over year basis.

Education:   A reminder of the Legal Updates and Bulls-eye trainings. Check with your manager if you are not aware of the details. The company pays for the cost of this training, so take advantage of it!

Website/Technology Updates:   The first official Wine Country Group Property Website v.2 has been posted. Visit www.5050lavender.com to take a look. Note the larger photos, increased photo capacity, new color template, send to friend & bookmark features, and more. Allyson will be working to set up new listing orders as they come in and then will be working to convert those requesting updates of their existing property websites. Great job done by Lourdes, Susie and Allyson in making these new improvements.

Speaking of websites, we have updated the programming to our www.bankprops.net website so that it now contains many, many more listings than previously possible. Thanks to Ally and Lourdes for working with BAREIS and iHomefinders on this update.

Also, coming soon, www.winecountrymobilehomes. com to be a source of searches for those seeking mobile homes across the entire Wine Country. This will be live in a couple of weeks and I will let you know.

One last technology update – we are working with a vendor to provide instant messaging/texting capabilities for our listings. You’re going to love this convenient and tech savvy way for individuals to gain information about your listings – instantaneously while they are parked in front of the house. More to follow soon.

Important stuff! The following three things are important to our escrow and financial staff – they pay the checks, so it is good to keep them happy!
1. Facing Sheets – please send in complete facing sheets. I’ve seen them with no title company, no contact info, no commission figures, etc. We acknowledge that you have to send these in within three days of ratifying a contract, but much of this information is available if you just take a few minutes to complete the form. Thank you.
2. Change of closing date – Lori is always looking at pending closings for company cash flow management. When you know that the closing will be delayed, or if an extension has been negotiated, please send Lori and Regina an e-mail so they can plan accordingly. Thank you.
3. Transaction Logs – the keeping of transaction logs has gotten sloppy. We are told over and over by legal counsel that a complete transaction log will be our best defense in a legal confrontation. E-mail provides a great means to have a running log, but if you are submitting e-mail messages, please include those with responses from the client. Thank you.

Closings: We have had a bunch of closings since the last Broker Blog update, but I do not have access to those lists as I am preparing this today – so, I will recap all in the next update.

Birthdays: Leo Merle is celebrating the milestone of his 70th birthday this week. Happy birthday to Leo as well as Howard Powell, Lori Greenstein Bremner and Monica Steensma.

Travel Plans: On a final note, Diane and I will be attending a Marketing and Technology Expo the balance of this week being presented by “Real Trends” in Denver. We will have both cell phone and e-mail access. Have a great week!

In the comments of the blog - you can see Lois' inquiry. My premise is that in markets that are heavily influenced by REO/Short Sale sales, there are two different markets - the REO/Short Sale market dictated by large corporate lenders trying to clear their balance sheets, and the conventional market - where the discretion of the buyer and seller creates a different, in my view, more "market driven" dynamic. I believe that we need to watch this dichotmy over the coming months.

Instructions for life: A month or so ago, I came across a twenty point list in my “Quotations” file that I think is pretty good. Here are the last of the 20 items.

I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R L I F E (4th bunch)

16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it

19. Call your mother (or your father).

20. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

A Tale of Two Markets: I recently completed the following article. I’d enjoy your comments (there is a comment box at the very bottom of the blog, or e-mail me directly).

A Tale of Two Markets or How the Sale of REO and Short Sale Properties is Distorting the Median Value of the Average Home

In the month of July, 50% of the single family homes that sold in Sonoma County, CA, were either bank owned homes (REOs) or short sales wherein the lender on the property received less than the amount due on the loan. In industry parlance, short sales are “REOs waiting to happen” as these homes are generally in the foreclosure process. These are what are called “distressed sales”.

The REO/Short sale home sales for the month had a median price of $320,000 The non REO/Short sale, or “conventional” sales had a median price of $530,000. So my premise is that we are dealing with two real estate markets and that the market cannot be whitewashed with one brush.

People are always asking me how the market is and how the value of homes are holding up. If the median price of all home sales is used, the market is off 32% in value from a year ago and off 36% from the median price in July, 2005, generally considered near the “peak” of the market. If the median price of the conventional home sales is used in this comparison, the market is off just 8% from a year ago and 13% from the peak period of 2005. This is important information. We should not all be suffering that our homes are losing their value and that we are getting poorer by the day when it is banks and institutions who are creating these huge discounts to get these assets off their books and to get out from under being landlords of vacant and typically distressed real estate. They are taking the losses, not the typical homeowner.

I never like comparing the general single family home market to the stock market, but I know that there are a lot of stock portfolios that are off more than 13% over the past three years – just look at the financial industry stocks alone.

I’m finding that appraisers are not taking into account the anomaly that this REO/Short sale “selling binge ” is creating in the market. Because a bank desperately wants to sell an asset on my block, does it mean that my home will sell for that much less, or is worth that much less? I don’t believe so. I had a vendor in my house the other day and he said “this place will never lose it’s value, it’s in such a great location”. If you are in a transaction and the appraiser is not making a distinction between these two markets, I believe that it is up to us as owners, or real estate professionals, to help them with the analysis. The appraising industry is pretty rigid in it’s approach to value, and I don’t believe we have encountered a market such as this one in our lifetimes.

I’ve seen homes that were purchased in 2004 sell in 2008 for more than they cost in 2004 because they are very desirable. I’ve seen a home offered at $4,200,000 receive an offer within two weeks for $4,200,000 because it was very desirable to that buyer. Same with a home listed for $3,300,000 that got an offer of $3,100,000 within the first week of being on the market. One might call these “discretionary” sales and purchases and they generally remained unaffected by the “other” market for REO/Short sale properties.

So my counsel to home owners is that your home may be worth more than you’re thinking, or at least more than you are being told by the media or the appraisal industry. At any one time, a small, small fraction of the housing stock (approximately 1.4% in the Sonoma County in the month of July) is on the market. Does that small amount of activity dictate the value of my home when I’m not planning to sell for five years? Not to any degree that I’m going to worry about. If, on the other hand, I want to sell next week and there are three bank owned properties for sale on my block, well, I’m going to have to reduce my price to compete with those distressed sales. If I can hold on, maybe I might rent the house out if I can afford to, the rental market is strong right now. Otherwise, I’ll sit tight for now.

Don’t be distressed by the headlines, your personal situation is likely extremely different from the bank who owns the house down the block. I suggest you speak with a local Realtor who knows the ins and outs of the local market if you are concerned about the value and marketability of your home. It’s really a tale of two markets.

Launch of Updated Property Websites: You can order the new property websites for your new listings beginning today. The order form will be updated by Lourdes by the end of the week, but in the meantime, fill out the current order form and put in the comments that you desire the new templates. Twenty one choices, larger images, unlimited photos, vertical photo options, and more. Great stuff, and all at no agent cost!

Loan Modification Assistance: Businesses are springing up to help borrowers with their modification process. Some seem a little more “above board” than others, for example check out www.consumerprotectioninstitute.com.

iHomefinder – IDX Provider Update: Here are some updated stats from the real estate search engine portion of our website which is managed by iHomefinders –

General Traffic
• 2405 new visitors
• 2483 searches
• 23791 properties viewed

Your average site visitor conducted 3 searches and viewed 10 listings
• Activity on your site is UP compared to last month
• You are in the top 2.0% of our most active Web sites on a nationwide basis

We distributed 16 new leads to our agents from last month's activity.

Closings: The following agents also enjoyed closings between 8/18 and 8/31: Carol Lexa (Healdsburg); Tammy Owens (Sonoma); Lisa Albertson (Sonoma): Diane Harris and Deke DeKay (Healdsburg); Frank Trozzo (Napa); Corrie Sterbentz (Sonoma); Constance Sharpe (Glen Ellen); Dmitra Sutsos (Sonoma); and Darlene Riddle (Healdsburg). The following agents closed two sides during this period: David Barker (Napa); Ann Amtower (Healdsburg); and Penelope La Montagne (Healdsburg). Daniel Casabonne of our Sonoma office closed three transactions during this period. Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker of our Kenwood office closed seven transactions and Cheri Stanley of our Napa office closed a mighty nine sides over this two week period. Well done, and congratulations to all!

Instructions for life: A month or so ago, I came across a twenty point list in my “Quotations” file that I think is pretty good. I don’t know where I got it, but I’d like to share five points in each of my next four blog updates.

I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R L I F E (3rd bunch)

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life. Do all you can to create a tranquil, harmonious home.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

Wine Country Group Update for July, 2008: For July, 2008, The Wine Country Group’s closings were behind the rate of 2007, but ahead of the rate of 2006. The month was buoyed by 26 closings in our Sonoma Valley offices and 19 in our Napa office. New sales for the month were 37% ahead of July, 2007, and new listings were 50% ahead of July, ’07, so we should have strong months ahead.

We remain number one in market share in our Sonoma, Healdsburg and Cloverdale markets and we have now tripled our market share in the Napa Valley on a year over year basis. We have been extremely active in the REO (bank owned properties) market out of our Napa office. On a year to date basis, our closing are up nearly 5 times (nearly 500%) while our competitors based in Napa have seen their year to date year over year business fall an average of 25%. With the organizational and sales skills that we are building in this market, we look to hold onto our gains as the market transitions to a more traditional one over the next few years. In the meantime, we know that there are a lot more REO properties in the pipeline.

If you might have an interest in bank owned properties, you can visit our website: www.bankprops.net, which identifies our current available listings.

Updates to Property Websites: We remain committed to providing great professional websites for our listings at no cost to our agents. We are launching Phase 2 of our property websites with many great improvements on 9/1. Here is a sampling of the upgrades:
1. Significantly larger primary images – you know that “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
2. No limit on the number of photos. We will keep a minimum of six, and we will not post photos that do not enhance the marketing. But, if you have twenty good photos – you can use them!
3. There are two new primary menu items: “Send to a Friend” and “Bookmark”. We hope that these will get viewers to use your websites more.
4. There is a built in “Flyer Maker” that will provide a default flyer if your Impact Marketing flyer is not yet available.
5. There are seven new templates to give you more choices for your “layout”. And, each comes in three color combinations – that gives you twenty one new options. You can migrate your existing website to a couple of these new templates.
6. There is a new “vertical photo” on the forms pages that gives you a great opportunity to use your vertical photo or crop a horizontal.

Once these enhancements are launched for the property websites, we will next make them for the agent websites. Stay tuned!

July, 2008 TrendGraphix Analysis: (Contact me for additional information and copies of the complete TrendGraphix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive).

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County (807) was stable on a month to month basis, and is 11% below the inventory (906) at this time last year. New sales (109) and closed escrows (93) were well ahead of the pace of a year ago (61 and 67, respectively). There was also a strong increase from the 86 new sales that occurred in June, 2008. The sale of bank owned properties (REOs) is strongly influencing the current market. Of the 98 closed sales in July, 2008, over 50% of them were either bank owned, in foreclosure or “short sales” where the lender accepts less than full payment for their loan. In American Canyon, 26 of the 27 closed sales fell into the bank owned,/in foreclosure /short sale category. The good news in American Canyon is that there is just a 3.4 month supply of unsold inventory and prices have stabilized at about $170 per square foot. The City of Napa had 23 of the 61 closings in July in the bank owned/in foreclosure/short sale category which means that only one of the Up Valley sales were in this category. The median price of homes closed in the City of Napa for July was $450,000.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: New sales in the St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) were up from a month ago (June, 2008) when there were 4 new sales. In July, there were 11 new sales and 9 closings. This compares to 14 new sales and 14 closings in July, 07. Up Valley inventory of unsold homes stands at 175 homes in July, 13% higher than in July, ‘07. The market in Up Valley can still be described as “sluggish”.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (2,283) in Sonoma County at the end of July was 11% lower than a year ago. New sales (394) in July, ‘08 were consistent with the last two months and were 20% ahead of the pace in July, ‘07 (328). Of the 395 closed sales in July, ’07, 241, or 61% were in the bank owned,/in foreclosure /short sale category. The median price of the homes closed in July, ’07 feel below $400,000 and equaled $286/sf – both four year lows. continued to drop as more REO (bank owned properties) sell and depress that figure. A year ago the median price of sold homes in the County was $600,000. Based on the current pace of sales, the inventory of unsold homes is under a 6 month supply compared to 13.9 months in January of this year.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (206) in the Sonoma Valley (Sonoma, Glen Ellen and Kenwood) at the end of July ’08 was below that for the period of July, 2007 (222). There were 32 new sales for the month (compared to 27 a month ago and 27 in July ‘07). Of the 29 homes that closed in July ’08, 11 of them were in the bank owned,/in foreclosure /short sale category. This is 38% of the closings compared to a 61% figure for the overall county.

Healdsburg Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (111) leveled off in Healdsburg in July compared to 123 in June and was 26% higher than the 88 homes available in July, ‘07. New sales (9) and closed escrows (10) in July were 53% and 38% lower than in July, 2007, so it remains a sluggish market in Healdsburg. Of the 10 homes that closed in July ’08, 3 of them were in the bank owned,/in foreclosure /short sale category.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (138) in Windsor at the end of July was consistent with the level over the past few months and was slightly lower than that of July a year ago (148). Sales were steady at 25 units compared to 22 a year ago. 15 of the 22 closings in July ’08 (68%) were in the bank owned,/in foreclosure /short sale category, so this is certainly impacting the Windsor market. The median price ($407,000) of closed homes and the average per square foot price ($235.00) remain stable over the last several months, but are behind what they were a year ago ($534,000 and $322/sf respectively).

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Cloverdale (82) in July, 2008 climbed from 77 units a month ago, and remains well below the 107 units available at this time in July, 2007. New sales and closings are consistent over the past five months at 6 to 10 per month. Of the 9 homes that closed in July, 5 of them were in the bank owned,/in foreclosure /short sale category. The average price per square foot of homes that closed in July was stable at $223/sf.

CAR Publishes New Article on Deeds in Lieu of Foreclosure: 
C.A.R.'s Member Legal Services team has published a new legal article, "Deeds in Lieu of Foreclosure." A deed in lieu of foreclosure is a transfer of real property from the property owner to the lender. This process provides property owners with an alternative to a short sale or foreclosure.

This article can be found on the What's New and Legal Articles pages of the Legal section on C.A.R. Online (www.car.org), or go directly http://www.car.org/legal/2008articles/deed-in-lieu-foreclosure/.

Economic Overview – The following is from my investment advisor. I think it’s a pretty good summary: “While the broad market briefly broke below (7/10-16 and 7/28-29) the sideways trading range I mentioned in previous notes, it is now back into that range again. Economic data continues to support a slowing domestic and global economy that should let inflation abate, particularly now that the commodities have sold off sharply--lower oil is like a tax rebate. This sideways action could continue into next year as we work through the extra supply of real estate, and continue to write down the overleveraged financings in the mortgage, credit card and other debt markets”.

Education: NorBar has some great education programs coming up including GRI and SRES courses. Log on to http://www.norbarrealtor.com/ and scroll down to “Seminars and Classes” to check the schedule.

Realtors can be a thoughtful group: “The Montreal Gazette reports the winner of a $3.6 million lotto - almost a year ago - has finally come forward.
The winner is a 24-year-old real estate agent Peter Dushop, who said he knew he had won but didn't want to claim the prize until he had thought through how it would affect him and the people around him.
Had he waited three weeks longer, his prize would have expired unclaimed. As it is, the newspaper calculated he had lost almost $100,000 in interest on the money.”

And, of course, he was smart enough to redeem the prize before it’s expiration. I don’t really believe in the various lotteries, but good luck to Peter in the next phase of his life.

Closings:   Darlene Riddle of our Healdsburg office, Richard Hurst of our Cloverdale office and Holly Evans-White of our St. Helena office each celebrated their first closings with Frank Howard Allen Realtors - the Wine Country Group in the past two weeks.  Wishing them many more!

The following agents also enjoyed closings between 7/28 and 8/14: Diane Harris and Deke DeKay (Healdsburg); Leo Merle (Sonoma); Diane Litchfield (Sonoma); Bill Streett (Sonoma); Steve and Marla Ericson (St. Helena); Greg McCaw (Sonoma); Susan Irvine (Sonoma); Sheila Deignan (Sonoma); Lisa Albertson (Sonoma); Sheila Kelly (Napa); Alicia Robledo (Sonoma); Herb Heil (Sonoma); Faeli Vyn (Napa); Kendra Martin (Sonoma) and Bob Beckstrom (St. Helena). The following agents closed two sides during this period: Linda Alioto (St. Helena); Isaac Raboy (Sonoma); Corrie Sterbentz (Sonoma); David Barker (Napa) and Mike Caselli (Sonoma). Cheri Stanley of our Napa office and Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker of our Kenwood office closed three transactions during this period. And, Daniel Casabonne of our Sonoma office closed four sides duruing this period.  Well done, and congratulations to all!

Instructions for life:  Following on the twenty point list that I found in my “Quotations” file, here is the second batch:

I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R L I F E (2nd bunch)

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

How the World Turns: We just spent a few days with one of Diane’s cousins from Sweden (along with her husband and son) introducing them to Northern California. We were enjoying the beautiful summer flowers in a garden in Carmel and Diane explained that we call that flower Impatiens. Her cousin replied, “that’s interesting, we call it Ambitious”.

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008: As you likely know, the President signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 on Wednesday of this week. NAR has a nice summary of the key provisions of the Act. Visit this link to review the key points.

A friend recently shared an analogy with me comparing the current housing cycle to the opera. An operatic heroine can die an excruciatingly slow death as her arias go on and on before she finally lets go and dies amid much applause and relief. So it is with this housing cycle, seeming to be experiencing a slow, moribund demise with intrigue and villains, injured bystanders, inept officials, etc., etc. But, great drama can provide catharsis, and perhaps we will see this in time as the housing and credit markets become more stable.

The Housing Act is attempting to address the past cycle that was over stimulated by a combination of cheap money and low credit standards. There remains a lot of “cleaning up” to do, and this Act will help some, but many believe that the current cycle may linger into 2010 – and we need to be prepared to deal in it.

Wine Country Group performance: Overall, our company performance in July, 2008 was slightly behind our sales in July, 2007, but well ahead of our performance in July, 2006. With the cost cuts that we have made over the past couple of years, we had a small profit for the month. Thanks to our many agents and staff who continue to work hard in a difficult market. The star office in the month was our Napa office which closed 19 units compared to 7 a year ago.

Affordability and Consumer Confidence: Certainly, with lower median prices and low interest rates, CAR’s First Time Buyer Affordability Index continues to improve. For the state, the Index for the 1st quarter of 2008 stands at 44 compared to 26 for the 1st quarter of 2007. For the Northern Wine Country region (Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino) the index stands at 39 compared to 24 a year ago. So it is a better time for well qualified first time homebuyers.

Last week, the Reuters/University of Michigan final index of consumer sentiment for the month unexpectedly rose from the lowest level in 28 years. The gauge increased to 61.2 from 56.4. The news on incomes was also on the rise. The proportion of people who expect their incomes to rise over the next six months increased to 14.2 percent from a record-low 13.1 percent in June, according to today's report. Records began in 1967. I am always encouraged when consumer confidence is on the rise!

I was recently shown a thirty five year chart of Mortgage Rate History based on 30 year fixed interest rates. The rate of 6.03 in May of 2008, was in the middle of the range that we have experienced since 2002, but it’s far better than the 18.45% which was the level in October, 1981. And, we were selling homes then! So there are reasons to be optimistic, and business to be done.

Closings: The following agents also enjoyed closings between 7/14 and 7/27: Michelle Delfino (Healdsburg); Tammy Owens (Sonoma); Mike Caselli (Sonoma): Nicki Rector (Healdsburg); Isaac Raboy (Sonoma); Constance Sharpe (Glen Ellen); Susan Irvine (Sonoma); Sheila Deignan (Sonoma) and Ann Foley (Sonoma). The following agents closed two sides during this period: Mari Johnson (Sonoma), and Robyn Makurak (Sonoma). Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker of our Kenwood office closed three transactions during this period. And, Frank Trozzo and David Barker, both in our Napa office, closed five sales each over this two week period. Diane Krause of our Sonoma office closed two sides during this period with a combined sales volume of $7,800,000. Well done, and congratulations to all!

Instructions for life: I recently came across a twenty point list in my “Quotations” file that, upon review, I think is pretty good. I don’t know where I got it, but I’d like to share five points per month in my next four blog updates.

Instructions for Life

1. Take into account that great love and
great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson!

3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self,
Respect for others, Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

Wine Country Group Update for 1st Half, 2008: The Wine Country Group’s activity for the first half of 2008 remains positive. Our unit sales and gross commission income remain ahead of last year. We are now in a profitable position on a year to date basis.

We currently have 111 pending sales with a value of $73,000,000 compared to 121 pending sales a year ago. We currently have 255 listings with a value of $198,000,000 ($776,400 per unit) compared to 240 listings a year ago at an average price of $891,000. Certainly, the values of our escrows and listings reflect the overall market and are lower than a year ago.

We remain number one in market share in our Sonoma, Healdsburg and Cloverdale markets and we have doubled our market share in the Napa Valley. We have sold more units (85) out of our Napa office in the first half of 2008 than all but two of our competitors there. Cheri Stanley in our Napa office has closed more homes (43) at a higher value ($16.9 million) than any other agent based in the Napa Valley for the first half of 2008.

June, 2008 TrendGraphix Analysis:

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County (804) fell on a month to month basis, and remains 9% below the inventory (882) at this time last year. New sales (87) and closed escrows (86) were fairly consistent with the pace of a year ago (81 and 97, respectively). There was a drop from the 103 new sales that occurred in May, 2008. As we have been observing, the most active market is in American Canyon where there were 22 new sales compared to 6 in June of 2007. As we have noted before, many of these sales are REOs (bank owned properties), and there are more coming on the market and being sold each month. These lower priced sales influenced the median price in the county down to $446,000 from $$488,000 a year ago and the selling price per square foot ($306) was down from $488/sf a year ago.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) fell off from a month ago (May, 2008) when there were 15 new sales and 14 closings. In June, there were just 5 new sales and 8 closings. This compares to 17 new sales and 21 closings in June, 07, so sales have certainly tapered off. Up Valley inventory is up to 177 homes in June, the highest that it has been in the last four years. The homes that did close in June of this year sold for a higher median and higher per square foot price than the homes that sold in June of 2007.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (2,310) in Sonoma County at the end of June was 7% lower than a year ago. Pending sales (375) in June were 18% ahead of the pace in June, 2007 (317) and were consistent with the numbers posted in May, 2008. The median price ($403,000) continued to drop as more REO (bank owned properties) sell and depress that figure. A year ago the median price of sold homes in the County was $600,000. Based on the current pace of sales, the inventory of unsold homes is down to a 6.2 month supply compared to 13.9 months in January of this year.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (211) in the Sonoma Valley (Sonoma, Glen Ellen and Kenwood) at the end of June remained on about a par for the period of June, 2007 (224). There were 27 new sales for the month (compared to 33 a month ago and 35 in 6/07), so things have slowed down a little. Both median price ($505,000) and the price per sq. ft. ($379/sf) were down year over a year from $678,000 and $447/sf respectively. The sales price of homes sold in June represented 94% of original list price – a relatively strong percentage based on our other markets.

Healdsburg Trends: Unsold listing inventory continued to climb in Healdsburg in June reaching a four year high of 123 units. There are 34 more homes available for sale than there were a year ago at this time. New sales (11) and closed escrows (15) in June remained steady with the rate of a month ago and were also similar to the numbers in June, 2007. It will be interesting to see if the unsold inventory of homes in Healdsburg continues to grow.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (132) in Windsor at the end of June was below of where it was in May (141) and well below that of June a year ago (158). Sales were steady at 23 units compared to 24 a year ago. There are only five months of inventory available based on the current sales pace. The median price ($440,000) of closed homes and the average per square foot price ($244.00) remain stable on a month to month basis, but are behind what they were a year ago ($570,000 and $365/sf respectively).

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Cloverdale (77) in June dropped from 88 units a month ago, and remains well below the 105 units available at this time in June, 2007. New sales and closings are consistent over the past five months at 7 to 10 per month. The median price ($345,000) and price per square foot ($221/sf) of homes closed in June, 2008 were both behind the values in June, 2007 ($500,000 and $281.00 respectively).

Please contact me for additional information and copies of the complete TrendGraphix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive.

Short Sale Suggestion: I found this suggestion in a management letter. It makes sense to me: "In short sales, agents with good clients (buyers) who are making offers and having the lenders say that they will get back in 60 days is absurd. What I'm now telling agents to do is find out who the lender is and get the buyer to get qualified by the same lender. That would expedite the situation and most likely motivate the lender to accept their offer and ultimately save the lender some money. It has worked well with multiple offers." It may save the buyer some money also.

June foreclosures down 3 percent: This is from a recent news release: "(IRVINE, Calif.) - The foreclosure tracking service RealtyTrac reports foreclosure filings for June declined 3 percent from the previous month, suggesting the market may be working its way out of one of the worst declines since the Great Depression.
The company said default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions were reported on 252,363 properties during the month - about one in every 501 households.
RealtyTrac said the number of homes in foreclosure was still 53 percent higher than a year ago at this time.
Nevada, California, Arizona continue to post top state foreclosure rates."

Web Stats: A couple of updates: In the 2nd Q. of this year, our web traffic to www.winecountrygroup.com (visit to see our new look for our home page) improved by ten percent in unique visitors (2,966) nearly 40% of which were “new visits”. The average time spent on our site was 2:09 seconds per visit, which I understand is above the average. We had visitors from 10 different countries – the most (after the US) were from Canada and Ireland. Visit this link for a nice report that Susie has prepared regarding our web traffic that can be included in your listing presentation.

Countrywide and Bank of America: As you probably know, Countrywide is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America. Our Marketing Services Agreement remains in effect and we believe that we are affiliated with the most productive and effective mortgage originator in the industry. Kenneth Wilson, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America, said that he is going to tell the other story of Countrywide...and make sure that the good news gets out...like during the last six months CW has helped more than 100,000 borrowers stay in their homes. Stay tuned.

Closings: Ryan De Mello of our Napa office had his first closing with Frank Howard Allen, The Wine Country Group – congratulations and wishing you many more. The following agents also enjoyed closings between 6/30 to 7/13: Frank Trozzo (Napa); Scott Rader (Healdsburg); Pat Brown (Sonoma); Barbara Sommerville (Sonoma): Jana Jones (Healdsburg); Mary Beth Foster (Sonoma); Tammy Owens (Sonoma); Susan Irvine (Sonoma); Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood); Jeff Veness (St. Helena); and Felice Torri (Sonoma). The following agents closed two sides during this period: Cheri Stanley (Napa); Erick Rothfeld (Sonoma), David Barker (Napa); Charlee Schanzer (Healdsburg); Sheila Deignan (Sonoma) and Daniel Casabonne of our Sonoma office.
Congratulations to all!

Retirement:

"The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose". E. M. Gray

Last week, under the smoky skies in Healdsburg, the colleagues of Scott Rader from the Healdsburg and Cloverdale offices gave Scott and his wife, Sue, a surprise retirement celebration. Scott actually retired as Healdsburg and Cloverdale office manager on May 1st, but the group planned a surprise canoe trip down the Russian River and an outstanding BBQ picnic.

I’ve had the privilege of working with Scott for about ten years and the quote above reminds me of him. Scott fostered the growth of our Healdsburg office from four or so when we opened to the productive bunch of 31 agents that we now have. He opened both our Windsor and Cloverdale locations and is instrumental for making us number one in market share in both Healdsburg and Cloverdale. He facilitated opening five different office locations and facilitated a merger with a competitor.

All of this was done with Scott’s “strength of purpose”, easy manner and pragmatic thinking. It is not a surprise that our Healdsburg office was our “Office of the Year” in 2007. All in all, Scott is a great person and we look forward to his continuing on as a contributing sales agent when he is not off sailing. And, let us hope that he is a great sailor, because he and Sue are heading off for six months beginning in September. Happy sailing to Scott and Sue and thanks for all that you contributed to the Wine Country Group.

Marketing Training: Realtor.com is coming to Santa Rosa on July 15th to present a free Marketing and Technology workshop. I like the statement that they make in their brochure that “Research now shows that you are 500% more likely to sell a home through the internet than through the newspaper”. That’s startling, along with the fact that 84% of all home buyers search for their home on the internet. Tell that to your potential sellers when you are making your listing presentation with the fact that FHA-WCG is the only company in our market to provide professional property websites for each of our listings at no cost to our agents. I hear of companies having their agents sign notes for thousands and thousands of dollars of marketing expenses over which the agents had no control. I don’t understand that concept.

In any case, check out this LINK if you would like to know more about the workshop.

Best in the Business: Please view this new handout that will be part of our listing package materials congratulating the firm on being named “Best Real Estate Company” in the North Bay. New and in color, it looks great. If you wish to mail to prospects or your SOI, please contact Susie.

Featured listings of the week: The most visited property on our Wine Country Group website for June was Tish Thames listing at 18092 Gregor Street in Sonoma. You can visit this listing at www.18092greger.com. Our iHomefinders IDX search engine on our Wine Country Group website remains in the top 2% of activity for iHomefinders on a national basis. In June we had 3,445 new visitors, 2,626 searches 23,107 property views.

Lock Box Lesson: One of our agents splits time between Napa and Boise, Idaho. He is licensed in both states, so if you have any friends or clients interested in property in Idaho, let me know and I’ll put you in touch. He had a listing in Boise where the home had a lever door handle that did not lend itself to attaching the lockbox. So, being trustful, he left it free standing on the porch. Well, you can guess what happened. Someone saw the lockbox, cased the house, stole the lockbox, got it open somehow, got the keys and burglarized the home to the extent of $40,000 including a car in the garage. Lesson… always secure your lockboxes to something strong so they cannot be stolen. It’s part of our lockbox rules.

Welcome new agent Curtis Kind to our Cloverdale office. I don’t believe that I mentioned that Richard Hurst has also joined our Cloverdale office. Welcome!

Closings: Closings between 6/16 to 6/27 – and we had a few…34 in the past two weeks! Tammi Mazziliano of our Napa office had her first closing as a Frank Howard Allen Wine Country Group agent – special congratulations. And on another special note, one of Daniel Casabonne’s four sales closed in five days after acceptance, and, all the paperwork was complete on the day of closing. Well done. The following agents also enjoyed closings for this period: Marianne Young (Napa), Constance Sharpe (Glen Ellen), Lisa Albertson (Sonoma), Sheila Whitney (Sonoma), Lisa Ehreth, Rico Ruthnick and Dee Grohmann (Healdsburg), Joyce Davison (Sonoma), Herb Heil (Sonoma), Susan Irvine (Sonoma), Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood), Steve and Marla Ericson and Bob Beckstrom (St. Helena), and Diane Litchfield and Regina Gibson (Sonoma). The following agents closed two sides during this period: Frank Trozzo (Napa), Pat Brown (Sonoma), Tish Thames (Sonoma), and Jeff Veness (St. Helena). Cheri Stanley (Napa) had three closings for this period. Daniel Casabonne of our Sonoma office had four closings for this period, and David Barker of our Napa office had six closings for this period. Congratulations to all!

Top Producers for 1st half of 2008: Congratulations, also, to these top producers for their great production in the 1st half of 2008: Cheri Stanley, Daniel Casabonne, Dee Grohmann, Steve and Marla Ericson/Bob Beckstrom, Isaac Raboy, Louis Horta, Beth Bruno, Ron and Jane Pavelka, Erick Rothfeld, Sheila Deignan and Frank Trozzo. Well done by all.

Preparation:

“More important than the will to win is the will to prepare.” Charlie Munger.

I find it all the time in cooking, music and painting. Preparation is two thirds of the work. I believe that it is the same in our businesses as real estate professionals. If we diligently and fully prepare, we will have more success. Let me know if you feel we can support your preparation for your work in any way.

Survey Results: Thanks to the 55 of you, agents, staff and management, who took the time to complete the survey that we sent out in early May. We got lots of good information and helpful comments. We are already making strides in response to the results of the survey.

Specifically, Susie has revamped our listing presentation materials, including the Luxury Portfolio materials, to make it easier to assemble both conventional and luxury listing presentations. Susie will be coming to each office to set up the files/folders in this new, easier and more efficient format.

By the next blog update, I will have a link to the summary of the survey results so that you may view them if you wish. In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions.

Countrywide Bank to become Bank of America Mortgage: Many of you expressed unhappiness with our Marketing Services Agreement with Countrywide primarily because of the bad publicity that they have received over the past year or so. Bank of America apparently has done the same research and when the acquisition of CWB is completed (due to be July 1), the mortgage arm will be renamed Bank of America Mortgage. We will be changing all of our door logos, listing riders, etc. We’ll keep you informed if anything changes.

Company update: The Wine Country Group’s activity for the first five months of 2008 remains positive. Our gross dollar sales volume and gross commission income remain 6% ahead of last year. At the same time we have pared our “fixed expenses” (not including commission expenses) by nearly 18%. Compliments to Lori Sargiotto and all of our staff for making this happen. As a result, we have a small loss (73% less than a year ago) going into the busiest and most productive portion of our year.

We currently have 101 pending sales with a value of $67,000,000 compared to 110 pending sales a year ago. We currently have 255 listings with a value of $212,000,000 ($851,000 per unit) compared to 253 listings a year ago at an average price of $909,000. Certainly, the values of our escrows and listings reflect the overall market and are lower than a year ago.

Our strongest performing offices in the first five months of the year are Sonoma, Napa and Cloverdale. We remain number one in market share in the Sonoma, Healdsburg and Cloverdale markets and we have doubled our market share in the Napa Valley. We have sold more units out of our Napa office in the first five months of 2008 than all but two of our competitors there. Our unit volume is up 84% year to date compared to a year ago and our four most active competitors have experienced reductions in unit volume that varies from a low of 14% to a high of 44%. The majority of this business is handling REO sales for lenders – very demanding work that our agents our doing with alacrity and skill.


Market Conditions in our Wine Country Group markets:

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County (816) rose on a month to month basis, but remains 2% below the inventory at this time last year. There was a jump in new sales in May to 103 compared to 64 in April and 85 in May of 2007. As we have been observing, the most active market is in American Canyon where there were 31 new sales compared to 10 in April and 7 in Ma7 of 2007. As we have noted before, many of these sales are REOs (bank owned properties), and there are more coming on the market and being sold each month. These lower priced sales influenced the median price in the county down to $490,000, but the selling price per square foot is relatively stable at $355.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) had its most active month in May, with 15 new sales and 14 closings. This is almost identical to the number of new sales and closings in May, 07. Up Valley inventory is up to 155 homes in May, about 7% ahead of the inventory level in May of last year. The homes that did close in May closed at 86% of the original listing price

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (2,265) in Sonoma County at the end of May was 4% lower than a year ago. Pending sales (384) in May were 17% ahead of the pace in may, 2007 (329). The median price ($425,000) continued to drop as more REO (bank owned properties) sell and depress that figure. A year ago the median price of sold homes in the County was $575,000. Based on the current pace of sales, the inventory of unsold homes is down to a 5.9 month supply compared to 13.9 months in January of this year.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (202) in the Sonoma Valley (Sonoma, Glen Ellen and Kenwood) at the end of May remained on about a par for the period of May, 2007 (205). Based on 34 new sales for the month (compared to 26 a month ago and 23 in 5/07) there are only 5.9 months of inventory available. The sales price of homes sold in May represented 92% of original list price – a relatively strong percentage based on our other markets.

Healdsburg Trends: Unsold listing inventory continued to climb in Healdsburg in May reaching a 15 month high of 112 units. That’s 28% higher than in May, 2007 when there were 88 unsold units in inventory. There was a jump in new sales in May to 12 compared to 6 a month ago but behind the pace of 19 new sales in May, 2007. The Healdsburg market is still a bit “stuck” with the available inventory not being attractive to the available buyers.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (141) in Windsor at the end of May was ahead of were it was in April (125) but below that of May a year ago (148). Sales were strong at 28 units compared to 19 a year ago. There are only five months of inventory available based on the current sales pace. The median price of closed homes ($430,000) and the average per square foot price of sold homes ($243.00) seems to be stable at the moment.

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Cloverdale (88) in May jumped from 65 units a month ago, but remains below the 103 units available at this time in May, 2007. It seems that some sellers decided to get into, or back into, the market. New sales and closings are steady at 8 to 10 per month. The median price ($422,000) and price per square foot ($249/sf) were both ahead of the prior month but behind the values in May, 2007 ($568,000 and $350.00 respectively).

Please contact me for additional information and copies of the complete TrendGraphix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive.

Featured listings of the week: Are most visited property on the web in the past couple of weeks has been Alicia Robledo’s listing at 959 Center St. in Sonoma – a 2/1 for $274,900.

Daniel Casabonne recently earned a new listing in competition with some of the top agents in the area. It is a striking contemporary. Visit www.barstola.com to have a look – it’s worth a visit on-line – and in person!

Send me candidates for “new listing of the week” when you have a new listing and have the property website prepared for it.

Short Sales: You will recall all of the red flags that we have seen relating to short sales. Here are some new ones: 1. Lender requiring buyer to sign a statement that they can withdraw their short sale approval at any time and direct the seller to accept a higher third party offer. Solution: Your buyer has to sign it – so close ASAP after that. 2. Lender requires listing agent to continue to actively advertise the property at the accepted short sale price to try to generate higher offers prior to closing. Solution: Close ASAP after lender acceptance. 3. Lender puts in payoff instructions to the title company that they shall have the right to revoke their short sale approval and take possession of the home anytime within thirty days after closing (wow – think of the problems that could create). Solution: Title company attorneys required that the lender remove this clause from their payoff instructions.

As Sergeant Phil Esterhaus (played by the late Michael Conrad) used to say on Hill Street Blues: “And hey…let’s be careful out there”.

Closings: Closings between 5/26 and 6/13 – and we had a few…50 in the past three weeks! The following agents enjoyed closings for this period: Louis Horta (Napa), Frank Trozzo (Napa), Deke DeKay and Diane Harris (Healdsburg), Mike Caselli (Sonoma), Frank Lazzarotto (Sonoma), Lisa Ehreth (Healdsburg), Linda Alioto (St. Helena), Ann Amtower (Healdsburg), Joyce Davison (Sonoma), Erin George (Sonoma), Susan Irvine (Sonoma), Isaac Raboy (Napa) and Dan Gallagher (Sonoma). The following agents closed two sides during this period: David Barker (Napa), Penelope La Montagne (Healdsburg), Erick Rothfeld (Sonoma) Michelle Delfino (Healdsburg), Pat Brown (Sonoma), Diane Krause (Sonoma), Sheila Deignan (Sonoma), and Ron and Jane Pavelka (Cloverdale). Carol Lexa (Healdsburg) had three closings for this period. Daniel Casabonne of our Sonoma office had four closings for this period. Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker of our Kenwood office had five closings for this period. And Cheri Stanley of our Napa office had a whopping 9 closings in this three week period.

Congratulations to all!

Changing Times:

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. -M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author (1936-2005)

There are a few more quotations on changing times and risk that I like:

Even if you are on the right track you’ll get run over if you just sit there. -Will Rogers

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones that you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

And my favorite quote on change:

There is a certain relief in change even though it may be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling by stagecoach, it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place. -Washington Irving

Market Conditions: I was away much of May, so had a late look at TrendGraphix data for April. Different conditions surrounding the various markets in which we are working:
Solano County: Inventory is down 9% year over year; Sales are up 63% year over year and prices of sold homes are down 27% year over year. 6.5 months of inventory at current sales pace.
Napa County: Inventory is up 4% year over year and sales are off 44% YtoY; Price per square foot is off 18% YtoY; 12.3 months of inventory at current sales pace.
City of Napa: Inventory up 15% YtoY and sales off 51% YtoY; 12.6 months of inventory at current sales pace.
American Canyon - An improving market!
Sonoma County: Inventory is down 1% YtoY; Sales are up 17% YtoY; Price/sf of sold homes is down 16% YtoY and 5.7 months of inventory. In the markets where the Wine Country Group has offices, Sonoma Valley is steady, Cloverdale is strong and Healdsburg is weak.

Call me for details from our exclusive TrendGraphix reports.

Top Producers: Cheri Stanley of our Napa office has achieved top producer status among all Solano County and Napa County agents with her combined year to date production in each county. She has over $11.7 million dollars in sales compared to the next closest agent in Solano County with $7.9 million and the next closest agent in Napa County with $11.5 million. She has closed 30 units this year compared to 25 for the next highest agent in Solano County and 10 for the next highest agent in Napa County.

Daniel Casabonne of our Sonoma office actually has dollar sales in excess of Cheri at $14.0 million YTD which places him in third position in all of Sonoma County.

Congratulations and “keep it up” to Cheri and Dan.

Company Survey: Fifty five agents and staff responded to the survey that we sent out at the beginning of May. Thanks to those who sent us their opinions. We have lots of detailed comments which we are currently analyzing. We will look them all over, and develop some goals to improve our firm based on your observations and suggestions. Thanks again.

Bankprops.net – Because our list of bank owned properties is continuing to grow, we have created a separate website for them. Traffic to this site has been fairly steady since we first launched in late March. You can visit www.bankprops.net to see our current inventory (it does not list contingent properties – only active and available). Feel free to pass this onto any of your clients interested in the REO market. We will also be using this site in some of our advertising in an effort to attract clients interested in REO properties. This site is also available from our main webpage – www.winecountrygroup.com - under the “property search” drop down list – the category is “Bank Owned Properties”.

Real Trends: Earl was recently in Denver for the annual meeting of the top real estate brokerage firms in the country. A couple of highlights from Earl’s notes at the conference:
Key Components of Leadership:
1. Surround yourself with great people
2. Prepare relentlessly
3. Hold yourself accountable
4. Develop strong beliefs
5. Be your own person

REO properties are resulting in lender losses of $40,000 to $50,000 on each transaction across the country.

FHA and VA loans are going to become prominent sources for loans

Per one top executive: “Newspaper advertising is dead. When riding a dead horse, get off of it.”

98 to 99% of all outstanding home mortgage loans are current. That’s certainly positive news that the industry can circulate.

Last year there were 300 attendees at this annual conference, this year there were 220 registrants. A clear reflection of the times.

Luxe Tours on Luxury Portfolio – You may recall that we are an exclusive affiliate of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World and Luxury Portfolio – the international real estate network that participates in more multi million-dollar transactions than any other single real estate organization. It is the best global network in the world.

Luxury Portfolio is now offering “Luxe Tours” on Luxury Portfolio listings. They are prepared automatically and for free on listings priced over $5,000,000. They cost only $25.00 for listings between $1,500,000 and $5,000,000 if you request. You can take a look at a “Luxe Tour” by clicking on this web link: Mission Farms Luxe Tour. Call Susie if you have any questions.

iHomefinders: Our website, www.winecountrygroup.com, remains in the top 2% of visited iHomefinder search engines across the country. In 26 days of May, we had 2,830 new visitors, 2,696 searches and 18,617 properties viewed. On average, visitors to our site conduct 3 searches and visit 8 properties. You can certainly be proud and confident in quoting these statistics to your clients and potential sellers. Also, recommend our site to your buyers – they will find it attractive and easy to use.

Featured listing of the week: Are most visited property on the web in May has been 84 Woodworth Lane, Sonoma. Check it out by visiting the website: http://www.84woodworth.com.

Send me candidates for “new listing of the week” when you have a new listing and have the property website prepared for it.

Frank Howard Allen Realtors company picnic: It’s that time of the year again – time for Frank Howard Allen’s Annual Picnic at Stafford Lake Park, Novato. It will be held on Friday, June 20, from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm. Miguel the DJ, Sophie’s Crafts, Facepainter and Ballooner, Giant Slide, Delicious Picnic Spread and refreshments. A great time for the entire family. Please RSVP to your office administrator by 6/13/08. The Wine Country Group picks up the fee for our agents and staff and their families, so go and have a great summer afternoon on us!

Closings: Closings between 4/28 and 5/23. First, Marianne Young of our Napa office and Gina Clyde of our Sonoma office had their first closings with the firm. Wishing them many more! The following also enjoyed closings for this period: Jessica Detwiler-Potts (Napa), Louis Horta (Napa), Frank Trozzo (Napa), Sheila Deignan (Sonoma), Deke DeKay and Diane Harris (Healdsburg), Diane Litchfield (Sonoma), Howard Powell (Sonoma), Michelle Delfino (Healdsburg), Lisa Ehreth (Healdsburg), Dee Grohmann (Healdsburg), David Barker (Napa), Nicki Rector (Healdsburg), Steve and Marla Ericson (St. Helena), Christina Bourassa (Sonoma), and Bill Streett (Sonoma). The following agents closed two sides during this period: Kendra Martin (Sonoma) and Ron and Jane Pavelka (Cloverdale). Cheri Stanley (Napa) and David Reynolds (Cloverdale) had three closings for this period. And Daniel Casabonne of our Sonoma office and Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker of our Kenwood office had five closings each for this period. Congratulations to all!

I'm a bit behind on my blog updates. A couple of things have interceded, one of which was my 60th birthday - egads!

I scheduled a massage for the morning of my birthday and my massuese always asks me for a word/thought to hold during the massage - instantly, the word gratitude came to mind. I always think of my Mom on my birthday. She died of breast cancer in 1972 when she was forty eight and I was twenty four. I am always grateful to have had twenty four wonderful years with her and to have the years that I have had to enjoy family, friends, colleagues and every day encounters with countless "strangers". Thanks for being a part of that mix.

Market Update:

Wine Country Group Update for 1st Quarter, 2008

The Wine Country Group’s activity in the first quarter remained positive. Our closings were 12% ahead of the 1st Q of 2007. Our sales volume ($87,127,813) was 6% ahead of last year. We currently have 65 pending sales with a value of $50,000,000 ($769,000 per unit). We currently have 256 listings with a value of $196,000,000 ($775,000 per unit) Our listing volume is up from a low of 171 units in January.

Our strongest performing offices in the 1st Q were Sonoma and Napa. Sonoma was 12% ahead for the period and Napa was a whopping 375% ahead of last year and had their best quarter ever. Our offices in Glen Ellen, Cloverdale and St. Helena also had production ahead of the 1st Q 2007.

We remain number one in market share in the Sonoma Valley (27.6% in units closed for the past 12 months (“UCLTM”) and Healdsburg (27.7% UCLTM). We did break through in Cloverdale to attain number one in market share in both closed transactions and dollar volume over the past twelve months. Congratulations to our agents doing business in Cloverdale and the Cloverdale office.

March, 2008 TrendGraphix Analysis

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County (748) rose on a month to month basis as it did in February. We are seeing some homes coming back on the market after taking the winter “off” and we are also seeing new bank owned listings (visit www.bankprops.net). Inventory is 13% higher at the end of March, 2008 than at the end of March, 2007. There was a jump in new sales in March to 76 compared to 43 in February and 77 in March of 2007, so things seem stable in the overall county. Upon looking more closely, sales in the city of Napa (42) were ahead of the 25 in February and close to the 50 in March, 2007. Up Valley sales (9) were even with the pace in February, but off from 20 in March of 2007. The real up tick took place in American Canyon where there were 24 new sales compared to 9 in February and 5 in March of 2007. So, the energy for the Napa County market right now is coming from American Canyon. Our agents active in that market believe that more than a third of those sales might be bank owned properties, and there are more coming on the market and being sold each month. These lower priced sales influenced the median price in the county down to $485,000, but the selling price per square foot is relatively stable at $361.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) maintained its pace in February, ’08, with nine new sales and ten closings, but that was half of the number of new sales and closings in March, 07 (20). So, it looks like the spring market did not fully kick in this March as it did last year. Incidentally, our agents have two new sales so far in April with one more expected next week, so the feeling is that things are “coming around”. The agents are working really hard for business right now. Up Valley inventory was up to 134 homes in March, about 5% ahead of the inventory level in March of last year. Our agents report that the price range from $1,000,000 to $1,500,000 seems to be the most sluggish right now.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (2058) in Sonoma County at the end of March was only slightly higher than the month before (2,023), and is at a level that is 13% higher than a year ago. This compares to a level that was 30% higher between 2/08 and 2/07. It will be interesting to see if the inventory takes a jump in April. Pending sales (259) in March were 19% ahead of the pace in February, 2008 (217) but 27% below the pace in March, 2007 (354). So, perhaps, the spring buying market is behind last year – again it will interesting to watch in April. Though the headline on the front page of the Press Democrat this morning was “County home prices at 5-year low”, our data (which excludes homes that are not traded in the area wide MLS (BAREIS), which might exclude some new home developments) shows the median price ($441,000) was slightly ahead of that of last month ($435,000) though it was 20.5% lower than the homes sold in March, 2007. The price per square foot for homes sold in the county in March, 2008, was $303/sf.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (161) in the Sonoma Valley (Sonoma, Glen Ellen and Kenwood) at the end of March actually dropped from 168 in February and was even with the inventory a year ago in March, 2007. Clearly, the Valley is not being overrun with listings. Based on 25 closings for the month (compared to 15 a month ago and 22 in 3/07) there are only 6.4 months of inventory available. New sales for the month (16) were down a bit from February (22) and a year ago (22), but still at a stable level looking at the past seven months. The median price of the homes sold in March was $530,000 and the average sold price was $692,000, so we’re having a mix of lower priced and higher priced homes selling with the mid range being the softest market. I know that two new sales were written up this past week in the $3,000,000 and $4,000,000 range, so there is activity, and a relative lack of inventory at the “high” end. There are a few bank owned properties for sale in the market, but not many. It will be interesting to see if new inventory emerges in April to meet the typical “spring market” demand.

Healdsburg Trends: New listings finally hit the market in Healdsburg in March. The number of available homes jumped from 71 in February to 99 at the end of March. That’s an increase of 39% month over month and an increase of 57% year over year. Unfortunately, the sales didn’t follow immediately and there were only 6 new sales and 4 closings in March. The six new sales is fairly consistent with the past several months, but lagging behind the 14 sales that occurred in March of 2007. With the soft sales and higher inventory, the Healdsburg market faces a 25 month supply of unsold inventory compared to a 5.3 month supply in January of this year. We’ll see if some of this new inventory gets sold in the coming month.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (124) in Windsor at the end of March was the same as it was in February and was 15% higher than it was in March, 2007. Sales (17) for the month of March were slightly ahead of the pace in each of the prior six months, however they were 39% lower than in March, 2007. The 28 sales in March, 2007 were the highest for any month last year. The median price ($422,000) and price per square foot ($245/sf) is holding up and the months of available inventory is a relatively low 7.3 months.

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Cloverdale (70) in March was slightly ahead of the level of last month (65) and was 19 homes less than the inventory in March a year ago (89). Cloverdale and the Sonoma Valley are the only two markets in our Wine Country area with lower inventorys year over year in March. Sales (8) and closings (9) were on a similar pace as in February and were slightly less than the number of sales in March, 2007. The median price (535,000) and price per square foot ($298/sf) were both ahead of the prior month and stable as relates to the last fifteen month experience.

Please contact me for additional information and copies of the complete TrendGraphix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive.

Frank Howard Allen Award Recognition: The production levels for 2008 have been announced as follows:

PRESIDENT’S BRONZE AWARD OF DISTINCTION
DOLLAR VOLUME – MINIMUM $120,000 GCI
UNITS CLOSED – MINIMUM 7

PRESIDENT’S SILVER AWARD OF DISTINCTION
DOLLAR VOLUME – MINIMUM $160,000 GCI
UNITS CLOSED – MINIMUM 12

PRESIDENT’S GOLD AWARD OF DISTINCTION
DOLLAR VOLUME – MINIMUM $210,000 GCI
UNITS CLOSED – MINIMUM 16

THE CHAIRMAN’S CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE
DOLLAR VOLUME – MINIMUM $275,000 GCI
UNITS CLOSED – MINIMUM 21

THE HALL OF FAME AWARD
DOLLAR VOLUME – TOP 10
UNITS CLOSED – TOP 10
Awarded to any agent in the Top 10 for four out of the past six years.

Hoping that you have an award winning year! And, speaking of that, Cheri Stanley of our Napa office is the top producing agent in both units (19) and dollar volume ($7.9M) for all Napa County agents for 2008 year to date - congratulations to Cheri for achieving this milestone.

Internet Update: Our primary website, www.winecountrygroup.com, has experienced a 257% increase in page views in the past six months. Tremendous! And, our website property search function through our IDX provider, iHomefinders.com, ranks in the top 2% in usage of all of iHomefinder's clients across the country. We are in the top 2% of volume of usage of the 5,000 firms that are customers of iHomefinders. In the past 27 days, we had 17,751 properties viewed and 2,215 property searches. We'll keep you informed on progress in these areas.

Policy Update: We have updated our company policy regarding "Properties Sold or Purchased for Own Account". The changes can be found in our Policies and Procedures Manual on MyWineCountryGroup.com - our Intranet site. Please check it out, or speak to your manager, if you are planning to purchase or sell property for you own account.

Also, the company does not provide credit report services for our agent use. If you need to get a credit report for tenant screening, there is a Tenant Screening Service in Santa Rosa at 707-578-5533. Please do not call our property managers for credit reports! Thanks.

Closings: There is a lot to cover here for the period from 3/24 to 4/18: Congratulations to the following for closings during this period: David Barker, new manager in our Napa office had his first FHA-WCG closing - congratulations. Also, Ann Amtower (Healdsburg), Frank Trozzo (Napa), Beth Bruno (Healdsburg), Barbara Greenhill and Eric Rothfeld (Sonoma), Herb Heil (Sonoma), Susan Irvine (Sonoma), Robyn Makaruk (Sonoma), Pat and Norm Brown (Sonoma), Rose Domner (Healdsburg), Lisa Albertson (Sonoma/Healdsburg), and Dee Grohmann (Healdsburg) had closings. Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood) and Deke DeKay and Diane Harris (Healdsburg) each had two closings; Ron and Jane Pavelka (Cloverdale) had three closings; Dan Casabonne had four closings; and, Cheri Stanley topped the list with seven closings during this period. Congratulations to all!

Dear Abby New Year’s Resolutions – #5:

JUST FOR TODAY, I will make a conscious effort to be agreeable. I will be kind and courteous to those who cross my path, and I’ll not speak ill of others. I will improve my appearance, speak softly and not interrupt when someone else is talking. I will refrain from improving anybody but myself.

On the Air: Our radio program last week received good reviews. We covered the status of Wine Country real estate and the current loan market. The interview is posted on line at http://winecountrygroup.com/audio/
If you have about fifteen minutes to listen at your computer – “tune in” and feel free to share the link with your friends who might be curious about the state of the market.

Bankprops.net: – Because our list of bank owned properties is continuing to grow, we have created a separate website for them. You can visit www.bankprops.net to see our current inventory (it does not list contingent properties – only active and available). Feel free to pass this onto any of your clients interested in the REO market. We will also be using this site in some of our advertising in an effort to attract clients interest in REO properties. This site is also available from our main webpage – www.winecountrygroup.com - under the “property search” drop down list – the category is “Bank Owned Properties”.

Leadership Council News: Earl and I recently attended a meeting of the Leadership Council – a forum consisting of owner/managers of twelve real estate firms from around the company. The group meets semi-annually to discuss market conditions, industry news and best business practice ideas. The fact that real estate is a local business was clearly illustrated by the market conditions in the twelve different markets in which these firms operate. Of this group, only our Wine Country market and the Carolinas seem to be steady and improving. One member of the Council is from the Allen Tate company in the Carolinas and they are running ads to counter negative national media – Below is an excerpt from an ad they are running on local TV stations:

"Are you hesitant to buy or sell a home because of what you're hearing in the national news? No need for concern. Real estate is LOCAL, not national, and it's still a great time to buy in the Carolinas. Home values continue to appreciate, and homes on the market are selling. Last month, Allen Tate Realtors sold an average of 57 homes per day in the Carolinas."

I congratulate the firms in our area that are emphasizing the positive experiences in our market places.

Short sale “bait and switch” pricing: We are encountering some agent/brokers who are listing short sale properties at unrealistically low prices in order to try to generate offers from unsuspecting buyers. The likelihood that a bank will accept such offers is very low and it ends up being a colossal waste of time, and a disappointment, for the buyers. The MLS (BAREIS) board is looking at this issue right now, but if you encounter this activity, you can remind the listing agent/broker of MLS rule 10.10 which says: Refusal to Sell. If the seller of any listed property in the MLS Database refuses to accept a written offer satisfying the terms and conditions stated in the listing, such fact shall be included in the confidential remarks section of the listing.

If you have any questions about listing short sale properties, please contact your manager or me.

Second Home Sales in 2007: The combined total of vacation and investment-home sales declined with the overall market in 2007, but still accounted for 33 percent of all existing- and new-home sales, which is close to historic norms, according to the National Association of REALTORS. The market share of homes purchased for investment last year was 21 percent, down from 22 percent in 2006, while another 12 percent were vacation homes, compared with a 14 percent market share in 2006. The total share of second homes declined from 36 percent of transactions in 2006.

NAR's annual Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey shows vacation-home sales dropped 30.6 percent to 740,000 in 2007 from a record 1.07 million in 2006,
while investment-home sales fell 18.1 percent to 1.35 million last year from 1.65 million in 2006. At the same time, primary residence sales declined 10.0 percent to 4.34 million in 2007 from 4.82 million in 2006.

My experience in the Wine Country is that the percentage of investment and vacation homes is lower than the national averages. My estimate in 2006 was that 18% of our sales were investment/vacation buyers vs. 36% on a national basis. I believe that it is probably even lower today. My intuitive reasoning for this variance is the relatively higher cost of entry into our market.

Thoughts for “real” sellers: One of our colleagues makes the following observation: “this is no market to test price. The feedback from the market is, if you don’t have an offer in 3-4 weeks, seriously consider a one time substantial reduction. The drip reductions don’t work long-term. Decrease your list price to the lowest level you can. This will give you the best opportunity to stand out among the pack”. Similar to the old advice from national trainer David Knox in his excellent video “Pricing the Home to Sell”.

Featured new listing of the week: Something new! Visit www.3780hagenroad.com to see the featured new listing of the week. Just listed a week ago and the website is up and running. Broker tour next week.

Send me candidates for “new listing of the week” when you have a new listing and have the property website prepared for it.

By the way, there are over 550 Wine Country Group property websites ordered as of this date - and we provide these at no cost to our agents. Call me, Susie or Allyson for more info.

Cycle for Sight: Don’t forget the Cycle for Sight event. Visit www.cycle4sight.com to learn more about it, to make a contribution, and to sign up to participate.

Closings: Closings between 3/18 and 3/24 by the following agents: Sheila Kelly (Napa); Ann Foley (Sonoma); Barbara Greenhill (Sonoma); and Jessica Detwiler-Potts (Napa). The following agents closed two sides during this period: Pat Brown and Daniel Casabonne, both of our Sonoma office. Kendra Martin and Sheila Deignan, both of our Sonoma office, had three closings for this period, and Cheri Stanley of our Napa office had four closings for this period. Congratulations to all!

Dear Abby New Year’s Resolutions – I missed a couple of blog updates with the continuation of Dear Abby’s New Year’s resolutions (see 1/31 update for the last posting) and a reader actually reminded me of it – so here is #4. The rest will follow in the next few updates:

JUST FOR TODAY, I will improve my mind. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration. I will not be a mental loafer.

On the Air: I will be part of a radio program tomorrow, Thursday, 3/20, that will be about the housing market this Spring (availability and pricing, for both buyers and sellers) and the availability of and potential rates for mortgage financing. The show is on KSVY, 91.3 FM in the Sonoma Valley or on streaming audio at www.KSVY.org. We will be on from 8:40 to 9:00 – so tune in! Also, Norm Brown of our Sonoma office is starting a weekly show on real estate beginning next week – I’ll provide details as I receive them.

Wine Country Group Update for February, 2008

Along with the Market reports below, I’d like to give you an update on the Wine Country Group. Our activity in January and February has been promising. We had the most closings (81) in those two months since the same period in 2005, however, our dollar volume in closings in January and February of this year ($61,500,000) was equal to 2005 and, again, ahead of 2006 and 2007. We currently have 68 pending sales with a value of $44,000,000 ($647,000 per unit). We currently have 238 listings with a value of $195,000,000 ($771,000 per unit) 42 of our 238 listings are bank owned properties and 15 are classified as “short sales”.

We remain number one in market share in the Sonoma Valley (27.1% in units closed for the past 12 months “UCLTM”) and Healdsburg (27.8% UCLTM). We are on the heels of C-21 in Cloverdale with 14.4% UCLTM, but we are ahead in inventory (20.5% to 13.7%), so it is just a matter of time before we break through there. Same is true for all of Sonoma County where we are tied with CB at 12.6% in dollar volume last twelve months ($VLTM) and ahead in dollar value inventory (11.6% to 9.4%). We remain a solid # 3 in the Windsor market place and a solid #5 in our newest markets of Napa County and Up Valley Napa. Our Napa production does not reflect the substantial business that we are doing in Solano County out of our Napa office, so we are stronger there than it appears. Call me if you have any questions.

February, 2008 TrendGraphix Analysis

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County (720), and all across Wine Country, rose on a month to month basis for the first time since last July, perhaps setting the stage for the typical spring season selling market. Inventory was 19% higher than February, 2007. Sales seem to have stabilized over the past six months where one might expect 40 – 60 sales per month. This compares to 60-80 per month around the same period last year. Business is certainly being done. There is great activity at the lower end of the market with some foreclosure sales occurring at prices well below there levels of two years ago. The median and average price figures were severely skewed by two sales that totaled $21 million dollar sales in Calistoga in February. One estate was 153 acres with multiple residences that sold for $14,750,000 after being nearly 1,000 days on the market. The other was a 113 acre estate parcel that sold for $6,000,000 after nearly a year on the market. Both estates had substantial vineyards on them. When those sales are taken out of the data, the Napa County median price was $545,000 for the period and the average price was $713,000. The City of Napa inventory of homes for sale (446) actually decreased eight units from January, ’08 and was 28% higher than in February ’07 (349 homes). New sales in the City of Napa seem to be at a pace of roughly 25 per month compared to a pace of 50 per month a year ago. The city’s median price of sold homes bounced back to $535,000 after being below $500,000 last month. American Canyon is contributing about 10 sales per month to the County totals, which is a healthier pace than was occurring last year at this time. Please call me for additional information and copies of the TrendGraphix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) maintained its pace in February, ’08, with ten homes sold. Sales and closings were slightly ahead of February, ‘07. Up Valley inventory was up in February (123 homes) and , uniquely for the wine country, slightly below the inventory in Februray of last year (128). The use of median price, average price and price per foot data is always tricky in Up Valley because of the small sample of sold homes and the high value of land and large land parcels that are sold with many of these homes. Over the longer view, median prices are seeming to remain over $1,000,000. The figures were skewed, even more than normal, in Februrary by two sales that totaled $21 million dollar sales in Calistioga in February. One estate was 153 acres with multiple residences that sold for $14,750,000 after being nearly 1,000 days on the market. The other was a 113 acre estate parcel that sold for $6,000,000 after nearly a year on the market. Both estates had substantial vineyards on them.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (2023) in Sonoma County at the end of February was static as relates to January ‘07, and is at a level that is 30% higher than a year ago. The inventory didn’t really increase on a seasonal basis in Sonoma County until March of last year and it appears that that will be the trend this year as well. Pending sales actually picked up in February (212) by 45% over January ’08 (146) which is positive for the market as inventory fell to a nine month supply vs. a thirteen month supply last month. Sales still were 23% behind those in February of ’07 (275). The median price for the County fell to $430,000, but the average price of sold homes was $673,000. So it seems that there are mostly sales as the lower and upper end and the market between $750,000 and $1,000,000 is the slowest part of the market right now.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (168) in the Sonoma Valley (Sonoma, Glen Ellen and Kenwood) at the end of February remained steady with that of last month (169) and is at a level that is a relatively modest 10% higher than a year ago. New sales for the month jumped up to 22, nearly twice as much as last month and equal to the pace of January, 2007. This dropped the months of available inventory to 7.6 months compared to 14.1 months in January ’08 and 7.3 months in January ’07. The spread between the average price ($1.225M) of homes closed in January, 2008, and the median price ($644k) of those same homes remained very disparate. The average asking price of available homes in February was $768,000, and the average sold price was $1,225,000. It will be interesting to see how long this pattern persists.

Healdsburg Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Healdsburg at the end of February jumped to 71 from 63 in January ’08 and is 34% higher than a year ago. Only 4 new home sales occurred in the month and only 4 homes closed escrow, so what has been one of the hotter markets in the Wine Country appears to have cooled off. At this sales pace, there is almost 18 months of inventory. The homes that did close in February were on the market less than 90 days, so, as mentioned last month, agents are eagerly awaiting new spring inventory to offer to their buyers.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (124) in Windsor at the end of February increased from 112 at the end of January, 2008, and is at a level that is 29% higher than a year ago. Sales (15) for the month of February were on par with the pace of January, ’07. Over the past five months, between 10 and 15 new sales have been made. Over the same period a year ago (excepting January, ‘07), the pace was 20 or more sales per month). The pace picked up in March of last year, so it will be interesting to see if that trend is repeated. Windsor boasts an 8 month supply of inventory which the lowest level in our Wine Country markets, but, this figure can change quickly on a month to month basis. The median ($412,000), average ($426,000) and per square foot ($229) prices for sold homes were all at levels approximately 25% lower than at this time a year ago.

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Cloverdale (65) in February was slightly ahead of the level of last month (63) and was just a couple of homes more than the inventory in January a year ago. Sales (9) and closings (7) sprang back from last month when there were only three new sales were and two homes that closed. The pace of sales and closings in February, ’08 was on a par with the activity for February, ’07, and if it continues, the market will have less than 8 months of supply. We do expect to see more listings as the spring market develops.

Update on Wine Country Group Website - We are in the process of creating a sub-directory on our website for "Bank Owned Properties". You will be able to direct your clients to one site that will list all of our REO listings (42 at present). Stay tuned!

Closings: Congratulations to the following who had closings for the period from 3/10 through 3/14: Howard Powell, Scott Inglis, Daniel Casabonne, Isaac Raboy, Joyce Davidson, Lisa Albertson, Mari Johnson and Julianne Anshutz of our Sonoma office; and Mechel Boucher of our Healdsburg office. Cheri Stanley of our Napa office and the Grove team of Rico Ruthnick, Lisa Ehreth and Dee Grohmann of our Healdsburg office closed two escrows last week. Congratulations to all!

March and St. Patrick’s Day: I recall a saying that “we all have a little bit of Irish in us”. These poems are borrowed from my yoga teacher with best wishes to you:

An Old Irish Blessing 

May love and laughter light your days,

and warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours,

wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your world

with joy that long endures.

May all life's passing seasons

bring the best to you and yours!

An Irish Friendship Wish
May there always be work for your hands to do;

May your purse always hold a coin or two;

May the sun always shine on your windowpane;

May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;

May the hand of a friend always be near you;

May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.


David Barker Named Manager in Napa Office: Here’s the text of a press release regarding David’s coming on board to lead our Napa office. Call me with any questions.

Napa, California (March 6, 2008)—Frank Howard Allen Realtors-The Wine Country Group™ announced today that David W. Barker, long term Napa resident and business leader, will become the Manager of its Napa office. Gerrett Snedaker, CEO/Broker of Frank Howard Allen Realtors, the Wine Country Group, said: “I am extremely pleased to introduce David Barker as the Manager of our Napa Office. Since we opened our office in Napa five years ago, we have surpassed many other brokerages to become the fifth largest firm in Napa County. We’ve done this with excellent agents, managers and a commitment to unqualified service to our clients. However, during this five year period, we have not had a leader that has long term roots in the community. David Barker is such an individual.”

Mr. Barker has lived in Napa for 20 years. He moved to Napa after an extensive sales and management career in London, Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco with firms such as McGraw Hill and 3M Company. In Napa, he acquired a small real estate publication named Distinctive Properties. Over 14 years of leading Distinctive Properties, the magazine grew from 16 pages and issue to over 100 pages each month. In 2002, Pulitzer Corporation, the parent company of the Napa Register and St. Helena Star, purchased Distinctive Properties from Mr. Barker and he embarked on a real estate sales career. In the past five years, Mr. Barker has become a top producer in real estate sales earning multiple awards for his sales production.

“David brings a breath of experience and a proven success record to our firm”, Mr. Snedaker offered. “His experience in sales management and his familiarity with the Napa County real estate market is unparalleled and we are fortunate to have him joining our leadership team.”

“I am excited to have this opportunity to join Frank Howard Allen Realtors, the Wine Country Group, and to have the opportunity to lead the Napa office to a position of leadership in the market”, Mr. Barker said. “Frank Howard Allen Realtors is celebrating its 100th anniversary in two years and is the leading real estate company in the North Bay. It is a firm with a solid pedigree, excellent staff and management, and above all, excellent agents. My goal is to see that we achieve the levels of performance in our Napa market that the firm has established throughout the rest of it’s market areas.”

Frank Howard Allen Realtors, The Wine Country Group, is an independently owned and operated brokerage. It has over 130 agents and seven offices throughout Northern California’s Wine Country and is the only firm in the Wine Country with representation across all of the Wine Country markets.

Market updates: Though the activity in our offices lost some of the vigor that we enjoyed in January, it was fairly steady in closings and new listings. Openings were down for the month, but our number of pending sales has risen steadily since mid January. The number of available listings have risen to 216 with a value of $172,000,000. Ron and Jane Pavelka currently have over thirty five listings that include an attractive new condominium project and subdivision lots for sale in Cloverdale. Full market analysis in the next update to the Broker Blog.

Legal Update: Reminder - Legal Updates are set for March 11 in Petaluma and April 29 in San Rafael. Check with your manager or office administrator for details. Also, the NORBAR Napa Chapter is sponsoring a brown bag session with John Tuteur, Napa County Tax Assessor on Friday, March 21. Come learn how the tax assessor’s office is dealing with our current market.

Agents Seem to be Struggling with 5 Things: Kim Ades is a consultant/coach to our industry and can be found at www.openingdoors.tv. Interestingly, the five things that she has identified relate to both the business and personal lives of sales agents – which makes sense. Her list includes: Focus, Money, Relationships, Career and Mediocrity. If these ring true for you, I encourage you to check into some kind of life and career coaching regime that will support the positive aspects of what you are doing. Call me if I can be of help in this area.

New Website Images: Our Wine Country Group and individual office websites have been updated with beautiful new photos. Check them out at www.winecountrygroup.com Thanks to Susie, Lourdes and Leo for the refreshed spring season look.

Cycle for Sight: Sometime shortly after moving to Northern California in 1976, I participated in a fundraising bicycle ride in Napa County. I remember it being a beautiful introduction to Wine Country and a really fun event. The “Cycle for Sight” has not been conducted for nearly a decade, but is being resurrected this year with an expanded purpose of supporting our veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kudos to Realtor Gary Rose in Napa for his hard work in bringing this great event “back to life”. Visit www.cycle4sight.com to learn more about the event, to make a contribution, and to sign up to participate.

Closings: Congratulations to Mara Kahn of our Sonoma office who had her “only once in your career” first closing in the past closing period. Wishing her many more to come. Other agents who had closings between 2/13 and 3/6 include the following: Kendra Martin (Sonoma); Ann Amtower (Healdsburg); Dulce Hercules (Napa); Michelle and Dianne Delfino (Healdsburg); Susan Irvine (Sonoma); Erin George (Sonoma); Carol Lexa (Healdsburg); Patty Keiser (Glen Ellen); Svetlana Ternovskaya (Napa); Erick Rothfeld (Sonoma); Howard Powell and Scott Inglis (Sonoma); Lisa Albertson (Sonoma/Healdsburg); Catherine Correia (Healdsburg); Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood); Nancy Gillespie (Sonoma); Felice Torri (Sonoma) and Louis Horta (Napa). The following agents closed two sides during this period: Jana Jones (Healdsburg); Jeff Veness (St. Helena); Debbie Hendershot (Healdsburg); Mike Caselli (Sonoma); and Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma). Ron and Jane Pavelka of our Cloverdale office and Isaac Raboy of Orion Commercial both had five closings for this period and Cheri Stanley of our Napa office had a whopping eight sales over this period. Congratulations to all!

A Life Well Lived: I’d like to take a moment to honor the life of Irving Dahlstrom, my wife Diane’s Dad. Irv died peacefully in his sleep on Wednesday morning at the age of 88. He called Mary Jean, his wife of nearly sixty years, before going to bed the night before to wish her a happy birthday one last time that day. I believe in my heart that he graciously did not pass on her birthday, or on Valentine’s Day, so those joyful days will not be burdened with the memory of his passing.

I only met “Irv” ten years ago, so since our relationship was young, I never thought of him as old. His eighty eight years were filled with six great children and many adoring grandkids. We all miss him now, in our different ways. To all of us, he gave his love and caring – and his sense of humor.

My grandfather, Robert Brotemarkle once wrote the following “life statement” to which I often refer: “Ability to do your task, adaptability to meet changing conditions of life and move on to that position in which you will serve others most happily, and a balanced sense of humor are absolute essentials for success in life; and the greatest of these is humor, for so long as a man can laugh at himself, so long will he grow, and the world be better for his living in it”.

By the measure of this statement, and by many, many other measures, Irv enjoyed a successful life. For all of us he directly touched, and for many others who never knew him, he left the world better for his living in it.

Record January for the Wine Country Group: I’m knocking on wood these days. Unlike colleagues with whom I discuss market conditions around the state, and particularly in Marin, San Francisco and the East Bay, our agents had an exceptional month of January. We closed 48 transaction sides – only four less than our peak January in 2005. However, our gross sales of $46,000,000 exceeded any prior January in our ten year history. Our pending sales are also holding their own and new listings are starting to pick up for the season in both numbers and dollar amount. I’m grateful to the hard work of all of our Wine Country Group agents and wish them continuing success as the year moves ahead. And I’m also still knocking on wood!

Market updates: Here’s my analysis of the January TrendGraphix data across our Wine Country markets:

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County (710) continued to decline on a month to month basis from the peak of 906 last July, but reached a level 29% higher than January, 2007. Sales seem to have stabilized over the past five months where one might expect 40 – 60 sales per month. This compares to 60-80 per month around the same period last year. Business is certainly being done. There is great activity at the lower end of the market with some foreclosure sales occurring at prices well below there levels of two years ago. The overall median price dropped below $500,000 ($492k) for the county for the first month in recent memory, though the average sales price ($690) and price per foot ($380/sf) were above last month. The City of Napa experienced the greatest increase in inventory (+45%) year over year in any of our Wine Country markets. Sales in the City of Napa seem to be stable at 30-40 per month compared to a pace of 40-50 per month a year ago. The City also has new three year lows in average price ($534k), median price ($489k) and price per square foot ($331). American Canyon is contributing about 5 to 10 sales per month to the County totals, better than the month of August, 2007, when only one new sale occurred.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) picked up a bit in January, ’08, when eight homes sold compared to just 2 in each of the prior two months. Up Valley is the only Wine Country market in which we are involved where available inventory (100) was lower than January, “07. Listings also tend to stay on the market longer in Up Valley (269 days for homes closed in January, ’08) than in any of our other Wine Country markets. This can be a frustration for owners and agents alike, but the agents are more used to this condition in this high priced and unique area.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (2024) in Sonoma County at the end of January continued to drop from the peak of 2784 homes that were available in September, 2007, but is at a level that is 35% higher than a year ago. Most of the growth in inventory has been outside of our Wine Country office markets as the inventory in Sonoma (169) was just 15% ahead of a year ago. Cloverdale inventory (63) is actually one home lower than a year ago. Sales experience is similar in that county wide sales (144) for the month are off 43% on a year to year basis while our sales pace is not so severely affected in our Wine County office markets. The median price for the County seems to be stable over the last few months at $500,000 and the price per square foot of closed homes in January ($356/sf) is stable over the past several months and only $1/sf less than the price per square foot of homes sold in January, 2007. The trend seems to be larger homes selling for less per square foot than they did one year ago.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (169) in the Sonoma Valley (Sonoma, Glen Ellen and Kenwood) at the end of January continued to drop from the peak of 255 homes that were available in September, 2007, but is at a level that is a relatively modest 15% higher than a year ago. Sales seem to be stable at a level of between 10 and 20 per month compared to a pace of 20 to 30 per month a year ago. One fascinating statistic about the Sonoma Valley market is the spread between the average price ($1.335M) of homes closed in January, 2008, and the median price ($505k) of those same homes. The average price per sf of the 11 homes that closed in January was a record $823. This data is obviously skewed by the recording of a $8.4 million dollar sale in the Lovall Valley area that closed at nearly $1,900 per sf. The home is a newly built 4,400 sf home on 20 acres, so the value of the land and land improvements add a lot to the per sf price. Interestingly, the home sold before being offered on the multiple listing service, a characteristic of some high end transactions. In general, in the Sonoma Valley, the high end and low end seems to be active and the mid range is languishing for the moment. Besides the $8.4M closing last month, there were new sales of homes priced $5M, $3.3M and $2.2M.

Healdsburg Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (63) in Healdsburg at the end of January continued to drop from the peak of 101 homes that were available in September, 2007, but is at a level that is 31% higher than a year ago. Interestingly, a couple of our top agents report that “it is the same inventory that has been out there for a while. There is nothing of any quality to show to new clients.” They are anxiously looking forward to the spring listing season. As 12 homes closed in January (compared to 14 in January,’07), Healdsburg (and Windsor also) boast only an 8 month supply of inventory compared to 13 months for the County. But, this can change quickly on a month to month basis. The median price ($818k) for the 12 homes that closed in January was the highest of any of our Wine Country markets excepting Up Valley – St. Helena.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (112) in Windsor at the end of January continued to drop from the peak of 171homes that were available in September, 2007, but is at a level that is 29% higher than a year ago. Sales (14) and closings (14) were actually ahead of the pace of January, ’07. Over the past five months, between 10 and 15 new sales have been made. Over the same period a year ago (excepting January, ‘07), the pace was 20 or more sales per month. ), Windsor (and Healdsburg also) boast only an 8 month supply of inventory compared to 13 months for the County. But, this can change quickly on a month to month basis. As in the broader Sonoma County figures, average selling and median prices are more stable than the price per square foot ($262/sf) figure that reached a three year low. The trend seems to be larger homes selling a lower per square foot values.

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Cloverdale (63) continued to decline on a month to month basis from the peak of 112 last August, and was actually one home lower than the inventory in January a year ago. There were only two homes that closed in the month of January in Cloverdale, and only three new sales were made. The sales rate has been bumping along at under ten homes per month for much of the past fifteen months. There remains nearly a two year level of inventory based on last month’s sales pace. It isn’t being reflected in these statistics yet, but our top agents in Cloverdale do express that the market is improving and that more business is on the horizon.

Please call me for additional information and copies of the TrendGrahix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive.

Training Coming Up: Contract Training begins on February 22. The Sales Training Classes (Bullseye Training) started on February 5. The Legal Updates are set for March 11 in Petaluma and April 29 in San Rafael. Check with your manager or office administrator for details.

Closings: Congratulations to the following agents who had closings from 2/4 to 2/8 (all the closings were in Sonoma last week): Herb Heil, Pat Brown, Sheila Whitney, Barbara Sommerville, Chuck Post and Daniel Casabonne. I may have missed a week of closings last week – I’ll catch up next posting.

New Years Resolutions #3: Continuing with Dear Abby's list of New Years resolutions which she adapted years ago from the original credo of Al-Anon. I'll share one per blog for the next seven updates:

Just for today: I will accept what is. I will face reality. I will correct those things I can correct and accept those I cannot.

Frank Howard Allen Realtors Annual Awards: Congratulations to the following Frank Howard Allen – Wine Country Group agents who received awards at the FHA Kick-off this morning:
Overall WCG Top Producers:

$ Volume and Units: Daniel Casabonne
Listings: Cheri Stanley
Top Producers – Cloverdale: Jane and Ron Pavelka
Top Producer – Glen Ellen: Constance Sharpe
Top Producers – Healdsburg: $ Volume: Lisa Ehreth and Rico Ruthnick
Units: Jana Jones
Listings: Diane Harris and Deke DeKay
Top Producers – Kenwood: Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker
Top Producer – Napa: Cheri Stanley
Top Producer – Sonoma: Daniel Casabonne
Top Producer – St. Helena: Linda Alioto
(Top Producer awards are for $ Volume, Units Closed and Listings unless otherwise indicated)

Frank Howard Allen Designations:

Chairman’s Circle: Linda Alioto, St. Helena; Beth Bruno, Healdsburg; Daniel Casabonne, Sonoma; Sheila Deignan, Sonoma; Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker, Kenwood; Lisa Ehreth and Rico Ruthnick, Healdsburg; Dee Grohmann, Healdsburg; Diane Harris and Deke DeKay, Healdsburg; Diane Krause, Sonoma; Ron and Jane Pavelka, Cloverdale

President’s Gold Designation: Dianne and Michelle Delfino, Healdsburg; Steve and Marla Ericson, St. Helena; Nancy Gillespie, Sonoma; Jana Jones, Healdsburg; Kendra Martin, Sonoma; Isaac Raboy, Sonoma and Napa; Cheri Stanley, Napa

President’s Silver Designation: Lisa Albertson, Sonoma; Louis Horta, Napa; Carol Lexa, Healdsburg

President’s Bronze Designation: Pat Brown, Sonoma; Mike Caselli, Sonoma; Joyce Davison, Sonoma; Mary Beth Foster, Sonoma; Erin George, Sonoma; Herb Heil, Sonoma; Susan Irvine, Sonoma; Mari Johnson, Sonoma; Penelope La Montagne, Healdsburg; Holly Lee, Sonoma; Scott Rader, Healdsburg; Constance Sharpe, Glen Ellen; Frank Trozzo, Napa; Jeff Veness, St. Helena; and Sheila Whitney, Sonoma

Frank Howard Allen Realtor – Wine Country Group Top Performers Award.

These individuals made significant strides in improving their personal production on a year-to-year basis in 2007. They achieved our incentive award recogntion: Linda Alioto, Beth Bruno, Daniel Casabonne, Sheila Deignan, Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker, Dianne Delfino, Michelle Delfino, Deke DeKay, Lisa Ehreth, Nancy Gillespie, Dee Grohmann, Diane Harris, Louis Horta, Diane Krause, Rico Ruthnick, Cheri Stanley

Frank Howard Allen Realtors Hall of Fame Recognition: There was a special award given relating to the Frank Howard Allen Realtors Hall of Fame. Larry Brackett announced the following at the Kickoff: “There is one agent being added to the Hall of Fame this year. This agent obtained his license in 1997 and was Rookie of the Year for his office. He has never looked back and has consistently worked on and built his business. In the past five years, as his career has hit its stride, he has closed over 260 units (an average of over 50 per year) and over $180,000,000 in sales volume. He has been in the Top Ten of all agents in Sonoma County over the past four years and this is his fourth consecutive year in Frank Howard Allen's Top Ten. He is known to work with equal vigor on every possible piece of business. I am told that this year he has closed on a $6,500,000 listing and opened a $14,500 mobile home sale, representing each party with the same care and enthusiasm. This Hall of Fame recognition is unique in Frank Howard Allen's history as this agent is the first member of an Independently Owned and Operated Frank Howard Allen brokerage to attain Hall of Fame status. Warm congratulations to Daniel Casabonne”.

Congratulations to our many Wine Country Group agents who received acknowledgment at this year’s Kick-off celebration.

Kickoff Speaker a real inspiration: Please visit this link to a Press Release on Alison Levine our Keynote Speaker at the Kickoff. She certainly was an inspiration for the over three hundred agents who were present.

Legal Developments: I’m sure that we will be hearing more about the following legal case at our Legal Update this Spring. Please review this link to read about this pending trial. I’ve said to agents in our sales meetings that I recommend using “personal experience and personal statements” when speaking with clients as opposed to generalities such as: “…it’s a great value” as was used by the agent in this case. More to follow.

CAR Memo on Law and Legal Cases: CAR issued the following Memo on changes to the law and significant legal proceedings affecting the real estate industry in 2007. Use the link, log on to CAR and check it out.

FHA Training Coming Up: The next series of Contract Training Classes and Sales Training Classes (Bullseye Training) are coming up soon. Check with your manager for details and I will furnish more information in the next update to the Blog.

Welcome to New Agents: Holly Evans-White, St. Helena, and Miguel Rodarte who just passed his license exam on January 17! Welcome and many years of success to you both!

Closings: Congratulations to the following agents who had closings from 1/21 to 1/25: Felice Torri (Sonoma); Beth Bruno (Healdsburg); Deke DeKay and Diane Harris, Healdsburg; Constance Sharpe, Glen Ellen; Ann Amtower (Healdsburg); and Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma); Cheri Stanley of our Napa office and Dee Grohmann of our Healdsburg office had two sales each. Congratulations to all!

"Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction". -Francis Picabia, painter and poet (1879-1953)

New Years Resolutions #2: Continuing with Dear Abby's list of New Years resolutions which she adapted years ago from the original credo of Al-Anon. I'll share one per blog for the next six updates:

Just for today: I will be happy. I will not dwell on thoughts that depress me.

Website Updates: We are very proud to announce the launching of our website updates for our Wine Country Group offices. Congratulations to Lourdes Sodari for her great work and for the collaboration of Susie Savino, Allyson Valente and others who worked on the project. The new sites contain a fresh new look and great new features. The site is still designed to provide an easily accessible and fully functional search engine for the entire BAREIS IDX database, but it also includes new features such as: Neighborhood data; Market Trends (TrendGraphix data); FHA-WCG Open Houses and “Just Listeds” and a section that features our active Property Websites.

I believe that it is one of the most professional looking and easy to use real estate websites that I have seen. While easy to use, it contains everything that a real estate buyer or seller might need. So, I am very proud to direct my friends and clients to the site. Take a look at www.winecountrygroup.com and let me know what you think.

New Intranet Site: At the same time, Frank Peavey has completed an update to our Intranet site now called My Wine Country Group.com. This gives you ready access to our on line file cabinets, the many software programs that the company provides, Property Website and Agent Website portals, forms and more. It also provides Marketing Updates, Tech Tips and general news of things going on in our seven offices. Once on the site, if you need your log-in information, please check the January 22nd e-mail from Frank, or check with your office administrator. One can no longer access the Intranet through the company website, so bookmark www.mywinecountrygroup.com and get to the intranet directly.

Wine Country Group e-mail addresses: We recognize the energy and independence or our sales agents. As such, we provide at no charge @winecountrygroup.com e-mail addresses, but we do not require that you use them. I would like to encourage you to get a @winecountrygroup.com e-mail address for business purposes. There are at least two advantages: 1) It is consistent branding and can lead people easily to our excellent website; and 2) The wcg.com e-mail account has relatively low spam blockers, so graphic mailings such as FHAReach, etc., do not get filtered out as they may in AOL, Yahoo, or other accounts. You can still keep your prior e-mail account(s) and have them all directed to your Outlook, or other e-mail manager. Call Frank if you have any questions about that and call Alma if you would like to initiate your wcg.com e-mail account.

No Marketing Fees: We are proud of our marketing staff and the job that they do across our Wine Country markets. I believe that we are the only firm to have an Interactive Marketing Specialist and Internet Services Specialist (Lourdes and Allyson) as part of our local team. I’ve heard that other firms have monthly marketing fees equaling $450/month or more. I think that we deliver more marketing punch (Property and Agent Websites, etc.) with no dedicated marketing fees. We’re proud of that.

New Auction of Foreclosed Properties: The next North Bay Hudson and Marshall REO auction is scheduled for February 16th and 17th in Oakland. They are now taking bids on-line. Get your clients registered and preserve a commission opportunity for yourself. Details are on the Hudson and Marshall website, or give me a call if you have any questions..

Education: Thought about getting your SRES (Senior Real Estate Specialist) designation. There is an upcoming two day course being sponsored by NORBAR on February 26th and 27th in Napa. Check here to get more info and get a designation for 2008!

Homes Sold Ad: Susie developed a new “Homes Sold” ad that highlights the good work of all of our agents in 2007. I really like it. Take a look!

Top Performers and Top Producers: Our Top Performers and Top Producers will all be announced at the Kick-off on February 1 and will be published in the Broker Blog on that day – stay tuned. We will have 60 agents attending the Kick-off! if you have signed up and your plans change, please let Alma know ASAP so that someone on the waiting list can use your space. The company does pay for each RSVP. Thanks.

Closings: Congratulations to the following agents who had closings from 1/14 to 1/18: Susan Irvine (Sonoma); Scott Rader (Healdsburg); Pam Giusto (Sonoma); Nicki Rector (Healdsburg); Jana Jones and Kent Mitchell (Healdsburg); Louis Horta (Napa); Erick Rothfeld and Barbara Greenhill (Sonoma); Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma); and Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood). Cheri Stanley of our Napa office double ended a sale during this period. Congratulations to all!

New Years Resolutions: Isaac Raboy shared with me Dear Abby's list of New Years resolutions which she adapted years ago from the original credo of Al-Anon. I'll share one per blog for the next seven updates:
Just for today: I will live through this day only. I will not brood about yesterday or obsess about tomorrow. I will not set far-reaching goals or try to overcome all of my problems at once. I know that I can do something for 24 hours that would overwhelm me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

TrendGraphix Updates for 12/07: The analysis across our Wine Country Markets is below, but first I'd like to congratulate all of our agents for twelve months of hard work and productivity in 2007. Our Sonoma office finished the year with a 27% market share for units sold - an even 200 for the year. Our closest competition had 92 sales and 12.4% market share. Our Healdsburg office had 106 sales for the year and nearly reached $100,000,000 in sales volume. They sported a 27.5% market share compared to the nearest competitor's 8.3%. In all of Sonoma County, Frank Howard Allen Realtors maintained the lead in dollar volume with over $667,000,000 in sales. Six of our Wine Country Group agents finished in the top 50 ($ volume) of all agents in Sonoma County with Dan Casabonne ranked sixth in the county with over $27M. We improved market share in our Cloverdale, Napa and St. Helena offices as well and expect to continue this trend into 2008. Market data follows:

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of December, 2007 continued its decline from the peak of 906 units in July. Inventory of unsold homes as of 12/31/07 was 19% lower than it was in July. Relative sales have remained fairly steady over that time. In July, about 7% of the inventory went pending that month. In December, about 5% of the inventory went pending. A prominent trend over the entire wine country region is that the percent of sales price to original list price dipped in December. For Napa County, that ratio was 84% compared to what has been an average of 90%. That being said, the median price of closed homes in December, 2007 was just 4.5% lower than that of December, 2006. The price per square foot, however, dropped to $364 from an average well into the mid $400s throughout the year. So, it seems, that larger homes are selling for less – perhaps, qualified buyers taking the opportunity to move up to larger homes in this market.

American Canyon, which has been suffering, had a bump in sales in December to 11 new sales. The market hasn’t experienced double digit sales In one month since April, 2007. Still, at that pace, over a year of inventory remains available. The price per square foot of closed homes in American Canyon seems to have stabilized around $220 per square foot.

In December, the City of Napa saw inventory decline by 21% from the high in July; a sales rate at about 40% of a year ago (27 new sales) and prices per square foot in the $380/sf. range.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) continues to have relatively stable inventory on a year over year basis. 131 homes were for sale as of December 31, ’07 compared with 126 in December, ’06. However, there were only 3 new sales and 3 closings in the month of December, so it was very lean. Comparing the number of sales to available inventory, there are over 43 months of inventory available – that will be a long haul for some if they stick it out.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of December, 2007 continued its decline from the peak of 2,784 units in September. Inventory of unsold homes as of 12/31/07 was 26% lower than it was at the peak. Relative sales have remained fairly steady over that time. In September, about 8% of the inventory went pending that month. In December, about 7% of the inventory went pending. The median price of closed homes in December, 2007 was a startling $100,000 lower than that of December, 2006 ($462,000 compared to $562,000). That’s a decline of 18% on a year over year basis. The price per square foot dropped to $322 from $359 a year ago – a 10% decline. So, it seems, that larger homes are selling for less – perhaps, qualified buyers taking the opportunity to move up to larger homes in this market. The inventory of unsold homes remains at about 12 months in Sonoma County.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of December, 2007 continued its decline from the peak of 255 units in September. Inventory of unsold homes as of 12/31/07 was 26% lower than it was in September. Relative sales have remained fairly steady over that time. New sales have been 14, 13, 17 and 13 per month since September. So, if a home remains on the market at this point, it’s likelihood of selling is improving. Still, new sales are less than 55% of what they were in December, 2006, and 14 months of supply remains available.

Healdsburg Trends: The Healdsburg market continues to have relatively stable inventory on a year over year basis. 63 homes were for sale as of December 31, ’07 compared with 60 in December, ’06. Inventory has declined nearly 38% from their peak in September. There were 6 new sales and 8 closings in the month of December, so the combination of lower inventory and moderate sales reduced the inventory to under 8 months supply. This is a low for the Wine Country markets at this time.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of December, 2007 continued its decline from the peak of 171 units in September. Inventory of unsold homes as of 12/31/07 was 28%% lower than it was in September. Relative sales have remained fairly steady over that time. New sales have been 12, 9, 12 and 11 per month since September. So, if a home remains on the market at this point, it’s likelihood of selling is improving. Still, new sales are less than 55% of what they were in December, 2006, and 12 months of supply remains available. The price per square foot of homes selling in the Windsor market seems to have stabilized at about $300/sf.

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of December, 2007 continued its decline from the peak of 112 units in August. Inventory of unsold homes as of 12/31/07 was 35% lower than it was in September. This is the largest decline of inventory across all of Wine Country. Closings are steady at about 8 units per month. So, if a home remains on the market at this point, it’s likelihood of selling is improving. Inventory is at a 9 month supply based on closings. The price per square foot for homes sold in Cloverdale remains in the $270/sf range.

SRES Designation Course: Is one of your resolutions this year to obtain a real estate designation? Get your SRES (Seniors Real Estate Specialist) designation in a 2-day class on February 26th and 27th in Napa. Check it out and register HERE, or call 800-918-9637.

First Transactions of 2008! The following had the first new listings of 2008 for the WCG: Tom Lawrence, Windsor; Scott Inglis, Sonoma; Bill Streett, Kenwood; Diane Litchfield, Sonoma; Doug DelFava and Susan Parker, Kenwood. And the following were the first to open new escrows: Erin George, Sonoma; Constance Sharpe, Glen Ellen; and Jana Jones, Healdsburg. Make it a great year!

Closings: We had a busy period from 12/31 through 1/13. The following enjoyed closings to start the year: Svetlana Ternovskaya of our Napa office celebrated her first ever closing and then followed up with her second last week - wishing her many more! Linda Alioto and Steve and Marla Ericson double ended a $3,450,000 sale in St. Helena and Beth Bruno represented the buyer of a $3,150,000 home in Healdsburg. Additionally, the following closed transactions: Deke Dekay and Diane Harris, Healdsburg; Ron and Jane Pavelka, Cloverdale; Tiffany Knef, Sonoma; Nancy Gillespie, Sonoma; Frank Lazzarotto, Sonoma; Alicia Robledo, Sonoma; Pam Giusto, Sonoma; Ann Amtower, Healdsburg. Daniel Casabonne, Sonoma and Frank Trozzo of our Napa office had two closings each during this period. And, Cheri Stanley in our Napa office had three closings. Great start to the year by everyone!

Thanks to Cheri Stanley for sharing the following article with me from Sunday's Contra Costa Times. It is the best description that I have seen of the subprime mortgage collapse and the losses and gains by different entities along the way. It covers billions of dollars of brokerage house losses, the loss of $64 million by eight small towns in northern Norway, to the loss of a new pink bicycle by a young girl in Boston. Two quotes stand out for me: "These are loans based on the borrowers' ability to refinance rather than the borrowers' ability to repay," and "Our assumptions included what we deemed to be a worst case scenario, but history has proven that that worst case scenario was not the worst case."

It's a good read. Click HERE for the link to "Betting on Bad Mortgages."

Here’s to 2008: With thanks to Lord Alfred Tennyson (and Anne O’Brien)

"Ring out, wild bells" from In Memoriam
by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the good that is to be.


The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007: If you are working with homeowners who are considering loan modification negotiations with their lender(s) you are probably aware of The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 signed into law by the President on 12/20/07. Visit here to read a synopsis of this act. It is designed to provide tax relief for owners of real estate who are experiencing “debt relief” through loan modifications and restructuring. There is further talk in Congress of applying such treatment to debt relief experienced through short sale or foreclosure, but these bills are some ways off. Counsel your clients to discuss their situation with a CPA or tax attorney so they fully understand the ramifications of the “debt relief” that they may be facing.

Iffy offers: We’ve seen some “iffy” offers on some of our listings. One example involves a “buyer” presenting an “Option to Purchase” to a “short sale” seller with a $1.00 option fee for a nine month option. They offer to “negotiate” the acceptance of the “short sale” amount with the lender and then offer to continue to work with the existing listing agent to sell their option position at a profit. I can’t figure how this is of benefit to the seller or the lender, so let me know if you see how it is more than a means for the “buyer” to double escrow the property for a profit.

Another example offered four different prices at which the “buyer” would purchase property depending on various financing alternatives ranging from all cash (an extraordinary and unrealistically low price) to over asking price based on 100% owner carryback with a wrap around mortgage. In the offer, the seller was to “check” the pricing strategy that they preferred. When we went back to the buyer and said – give us one solid approach that works for you, they didn’t come back with anything with which the seller could work.

Finally, we’ve seen listing agents promoting “quasi” private auctions on short sale properties, encouraging significantly low, and seemingly unrealistic, low bids. They are doing this without having negotiated an approved short sale price with the lender. Kind of like dropping the hook out to go fishing. We have encouraged our agents and clients to avoid these scenarios as a waste of time.

New Auction of Foreclosed Properties Scheduled: We are expecting a new auction of Northern California foreclosed properties to take place on the weekend of February 16th and 17th. One of our agent's clients is pulling together an investor “pool” and they are intending to buy 25 or more homes at the auction. Follow the details on this Hudson and Marshall website, or stay tuned here for updates. Get your clients ready!

BAREIS Feature: Did you know… that on the BAREIS homepage when you log on there is a section entitled “Your Listings” that provides helpful information regarding your listings? For instance, one of the information items is “Expiring within 14 Days” and if you have two listings expiring within the next fourteen days it will have the number “2”. When you click on the “2”, it will pull up the listing details so you can work on your extensions. Speaking of expireds, that leads to the next topic:

Hotsheet Patterns 12/31/07 to 1/3/08: Where is the inventory going? For Napa County, 88 residential listings (excluding 10 builder listings) expired on 12/31/07. That’s over 10% of the available inventory that was in place on 11/30/07. As of 1/3/07, 22 of these properties were “Back On Market” leaving a 8% net reduction in inventory for the period. The question is whether this pattern will hold. Within the Wine Country Group, our inventory fell from 215 units to 200 units (a 7% reduction) during this period and our average list price fell from $723,000 to $696,000 – a 4% reduction. So it is clear that some of our higher priced listings are taking a rest – at least for now. Our average listing selling price peaked for this year at $941,000 in early July. It has trended downwards since then.

Closings: Congratulations to the following agents who had the last closings of the year over the period from 12/09 to 12/31: Joyce Davison (Sonoma); Penelope La Montagne (Healdsburg); Leo Merle (Sonoma); Jana Jones (Healdsburg); Frank Trozzo (Napa); Erin George (Sonoma); Kip Zook (Cloverdale); David Reynolds (Cloverdale) and Kendra Martin (Sonoma). Cheri Stanley of our Napa office had two closings during this period and the following agents had three transactions each during this period: Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma); Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood) and Sheila Deignan of our Sonoma office. Special kudos to Sheila for her first closings since joining the WCG a few months ago – and three in two weeks – keep it going! Congratulations to all and Happy New Year.

Mark the date of the 2008 kickoff - Friday, February 1st - invitations to follow. Here’s to 2008!

Visiting Family: Many of us may be in the spot where our parents are getting up there in age. Diane’s parents are 84 and 87 respectively and we decided to visit for a week a week ago. We had a great time! Diane’s Dad was recovering from surgery and was getting about a little slowly, but he was delighted to have the company and help and “every day is a little better” was his mantra. It reminded me of a quote from Leonardo da Vinci that I saw a while ago: “As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death”. It is nice to visit and see that our parents are still using their lives well.

Training and Designations: It’s a great time to plan your education sessions and designation efforts for the coming year. For the coming year’s GRI designation classes in Northern California, visit the following GRI Website

Property Websites: The Wine Country Group is the only firm that I know of that allows our agents to build attractive and effective websites for each of their listings at no cost to the agent. This should certainly put us at a competitive advantage. In our advertising efforts, we are emphasizing and prioritizing listings that have a property website – so it behooves each agent to development one for their listings. Remember, great photos and great copy make a great difference. Check with Ally or Susie if you have any questions – they are there to help us create the most effective marketing pieces that we can.

Update to the Wine Country Group website: Speaking of websites, in concert with our 10th anniversary as part of the Frank Howard Allen family, we are updating our website. Here’s a glimpse at the new Homepage. The site will have added functions and features while remaining streamlined, efficient to use and attractive and professional to look at. You can see that one block at the bottom right takes you directly to our listing websites. We are looking for a launch in the next couple of weeks and will keep you posted.

In House Assistants: Don’t forget that Dina Mogannam (939-2073) is on our staff to assist you as a Transaction Coordinator and that Theresa Lucia (939-2038) is on staff to assist you as a Sales Assistant. Ask around and you will find that those who are working with Dina and Theresa have nothing but superlatives to describe the job that they do. Even though you may not be in our Sonoma office, depending on your requirements, they may still be able to assist you. Give them a call.

November TrendGraphix Analysis: Please call me for additional information and copies of the TrendGrahix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive.

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County declined appreciably on a month to month basis for the first time since January of this year. It had been on pretty much of a straight line upwards since that time. As of 11/30/07, 805 homes were for sale in the county compared to 903 as of 10/31/07. Certainly the season creates a natural decline in the inventory as homes that have not sold may be “pulled off the market for the holidays”. We can usually expect inventory to continue to decline until February when the Spring sales market takes hold. There were 54 closings in the month and 48 new sales which is pretty similar to the last few months. On a year to year basis, the median price of the homes that sold in November in Napa County was 10% lower, $592,000 compared to $650,000 a year ago. Attending the weekly Napa MLS meeting a couple of weeks ago, one of our agents was prompted to say that: “the $350,000 house has returned to the Napa market after a hiatus of several years. We are seeing lower priced inventory in the new listings that are appearing. The average asking price for listed homes in the City of Napa was $883,000 at the end of November, 2007. That is the lowest average asking price in the TrendGraphix data that goes back to 5/04. My guess is that it is the lowest average asking price since 2001. Affordability is a good thing for new homeowners, and the affordability index is improving. Please call me for additional information and copies of the TrendGrahix reports – a Frank Howard Allen Realtors exclusive.


St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) was very quiet in November. 8 homes closed, and only 2 homes sold. Inventory remained “flat” at 145 homes for sale compared to 149 a month ago and 147 a year ago. It’s nice that the inventory is stable, but it would also be nice to have a bit more robust selling cycle such as the 12 that sold a month ago, or the 15 that sold in November of 2006. The 8 homes that did close in November had an average days on market of 101 days – a low for the past twelve months. That compares to 130 days for all closed homes in Napa County. So maybe the newer, “better” priced listings are selling.


Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of November continued to decline. There are 2,288 homes available as of 11/30/08 which is 18% fewer than September of 2008. Closings and sales are steady compared to past few months with roughly 220 closings per month and 215 new sales. We’ll see how that holds up through the holiday season – typically, a slower period. The median price of the homes that closed in November was $509,000, 10% less than the median of closed homes in 11/06. We are seeing lower priced inventory in the new listings that are appearing. The average asking price for listed homes in the County of Sonoma was $703,000 at the end of November, 2007. That is the lowest average asking price in the TrendGraphix data that goes back to 5/04. My guess is that it is the lowest average asking price since 2001. Affordability is a good thing for new homeowners, and the affordability index is improving.


Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of November continued to drop. As of November 30, 219 homes were available for sale compared to 255 at the end of September, a 14% decrease. Closings and sales were steady compared to the past few months. Roughly, there are 18 closings per month and 15 new sales. The median price of the homes that closed in November was $690,000 compared to $750,000 a year ago, a decrease of 8%. The average asking price for listed homes in the Sonoma Valley was $920,000 at the end of November, 2007. That is the lowest average asking price in the TrendGraphix data that goes back to 5/04. My guess is that it is the lowest average asking price since 2001. Affordability is a good thing for new homeowners, and the affordability index is improving.


Healdsburg Trends: The inventory of homes for sale (76) at the end of November were 25% below the peak of 101 at the end of September. They also compared favorably to the inventory in November of 2006 which stood at 78. In fact, of all of our wine country markets, Healdsburg has the lowest months of inventory: 6.3 months based on the closings in 11/07 and 5.1 months based on the sales in 11/07. Closings (12) and new sales (15) were ahead of last month and pretty much even with that of a year ago. For whatever reason, the sold price to original list price ratio for the homes that closed in November in Healdsburg fell to 82% from an average of about 90%. I guess it was a month of good bargains!


Windsor Trends: Inventory of available homes in Windsor continued to fall in November. As of November 30, 138 homes were available for sale compared to 171 at the end of September – a 19% decrease. However, inventory is 39% higher than it was a year ago in November, 2006. Closings and sales have been steady over the past several months. There have been roughly 10 closings per month and 11 new sales. This is about half of the sales pace of November, 2006. The average asking price for listed homes in Windsor was $580,000 at the end of November, 2007. That is the lowest average asking price in the TrendGraphix data that goes back to 5/04. My guess is that it is the lowest average asking price since 2001. Affordability is a good thing for new homeowners, and the affordability index is improving. The median price for the ten homes closed in November was $461,000 compared to $570,000 a year ago, but the price per square foot for those homes was $356/sf compared to $305/sf a year ago. Sounds like smaller homes are selling at more per square foot.


Cloverdale Trends: Inventory in Cloverdale at the end of November fell for the fourth straight month. 84 homes are available compared to 112 in August (a 25% decline) and 79 a year ago. New sales bounced back to 9 compared to just 1 a month ago. Actually, sales and closings have been pretty stable, if slow, over the past twelve months averaging about 7 per month. The median price for closed sales in November was off 14% from a year ago, but the sample was quite small.

Closings: Many of our closings come from floor time, or from meeting our clients out in the community. Remember that professional business attire reflects the caliber of the work that we do and the service that we provide. Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the period of 11/26 to 12/7: Marina Zachau (Sonoma); Penelope La Montagne (Healdsburg); Tiffany Knef (Sonoma); Ann Amtower (Healdsburg); Frank Trozzo (Napa); Louis Horta (Napa – a $5,000,000 vineyard sale- go Louis!); Beth Bruno (Healdsburg – a $3.72M sale!); Erin George; and Leo Merle. The following agents had two transactions each during this period: Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma); Pat Brown (Sonoma); Deke DeKay (Healdsburg); and Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood). Congratulations to all!

Congratulations to Alma!: Alma Aguilar, office administrator in our Sonoma office, has let us know that she is expecting a baby in late April of next year. I’m expecting that the little tyke will be born on April 22 which happens to be Alma’s and my mutual birthday! We don’t know Alma’s maternity leave schedule yet, but will keep you informed as the dates approach. Wishing Alma a comfortable pregnancy and happy baby.

Business Planning: “The purpose of a plan is to disguise the fact that you have no idea what you should be doing”. Scott Adams, “Dilbert’s Guide to the Rest of Your Life”.

Well, I don’t think that Dilbert was ever a business owner like all of us in the real estate sales business are. As Earl always says about agents: “You are the CEO of your own business”. So we encourage everyone to set aside a half a day before the end of the year, away from the office, to complete your business plan for 2008.

We’re working on the company’s budget right now, and I am optimistic! Our companywide pending sales hit a low of 58 units in mid October and has climbed each week since to 74 units as of today. Our inventory reached a high of 270 units in late September and has fallen weekly since to 220 units as of today. Sales rising at a faster rate than listings – I like the trend. We are being cautious with our forecasts for 2008, but we do feel that “real” buyers are out there and we know, at least from the thirty or so REO listings that we currently have, that we have some very “real” sellers. Please contact me, Earl or Scott if you would like us to give you feedback on you business plan.

Auction Results: In a prior blog post, I mentioned that ten of our REO listings were going into a Northern California auction on 11/17 and 18. Well in the course of the weekend, nine of the listings sold and we represented eight additional buyers in the auction. 17 sales in two days – all to close by mid December.

Congratulations to Cheri Stanley who represented all of the listings and three of the buyers. Svetlana Turnovskaya represented three buyers and Dulce Hercules represented one successful bidder. Faeli Vyn’s client wasn’t successful at the auction, but is continuing to search for properties with her.

If you haven’t been to one of these auctions, I encourage you to check it out. It is kind of a carnival atmosphere with free refreshments, live music, the main barker and a herd of assistants roaming up and down the aisles trying to identify and assist bidders. I was afraid to scratch my nose in fear of making a bid. The crowd was large (several hundred), diverse and boisterous. Between each successful sale, the live music would pick up for fifteen seconds or so to keep the energy level at a high pitch. They sold homes at a clip of 25 per hour and in total, they sold over 1150 homes in California in the one week that they were here. They say they are already planning the next Northern California auction for February and next time we will be better prepared. I’ll keep you informed.

By the way, in case you are wondering, including the “buyer’s premium” of 5% on the bid price, the nine listings of Cheri’s sold at auction in a range from 60% to 83% of the current list price. If you have some clients with a little cash, in my view, they can get some good bargains in these properties. As one agent said in the sales meeting today: “Wish I had some extra money”!

HomeFeedBack.com: Allyson Valente, our Internet Marketing Services support person, has researched several on-line “Showing Feedback” sites on the internet. We are recommending HomeFeedBack.com if you want to use this service. It costs an agent $19.95/mo. You can craft you own questions for each listing and there it provides and easy, “third party opinion” feedback option for your sellers. Visit www.homefeedback.com to look at their features. If you choose to sign-up, Ally, or your office administrator, can provide you with the company logo and agent photo to upload to the HFB site.

Call Allyson at 939-2082 if you have any questions.

Luxury Portfolio: Effective January 1, 2008, to conform with the standards of Luxury Portfolio properties in Marin County, our Wine Country listings will have a minimum price of $1,500,000 to qualify for Luxury Portfolio marketing support. In addition, the property must have the following to qualify for Luxury Portfolio marketing support:
Five (5) good quality, high-resolution photos.
Residential listings only. No vacant land (unless special exception such as great photography of view, etc. - always subject to approval)
No renderings unless they are architectural perspective, full color illustrated renderings (always subject to approval)
Under Construction – will be displayed with a minimum of 1 full color rendering and one "under construction" photo. The remaining 3 photos can be renderings, views or "under construction."
Pre-Construction – will be displayed with a minimum of 1 full color rendering. The remaining 4 photos can be renderings, views or site photos.
No floor plans as part of the required five photo images (floor plans may be included if you already have 5 photo images).
All properties must have grammatically correct ad copy and preferably should include a detailed property description.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Tenth Anniversay Celebration: RSVP deadline is December 1. Please let Linda in our Napa office know (Linda@winecountrygroup.com) (265-1600) if you and your guest will be attending We look forward to celebrating with the individuals with whom we work every day and to our delighted to recognize and celebrate with the individuals who support us in our efforts – our spouses, significant others and friends. Look for a new launch for our Wine Country Group website (preview) coincident with out tenth anniversary.

New Banner Ad on Sonoma News.com Check it out!
(Be aware that it rotates with banners from the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art and one other vendor).

Wine Country Market Analysis for October, 2007: Remember that TrendGraphix is an exclusive tool for the use of our agents. They are improving the utility of this software every month. Explore it’s full benefits when you can.

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Napa County appears to have stabilized as indicated in the October TrendGraphix data. For the first time in months, for every net new listing in the month, there was one closing and/or new sale – so the net inventory remained static. I expect that inventory will actually decline over the next several months and new sales will exceed new listings for the coming period. The median price of the 56 homes closed in Napa County in October was actually higher than the median in 10/06 ($648,000 compared to $625,000) and the price per square foot of the homes sold in October was also slightly higher than a year ago ($427/sf compared to $424/sf). American Canyon continues to suffer with 45 months of inventory based on the sales pace of four homes per month which occurred in October. Prices seem to be getting attractive in American Canyon, however, with the average asking price declining to $547,000 from $628,000 a year ago. Perhaps buyer’s will start recognizing these prices as an opportunity.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) is the only one of our Wine Country markets where inventory is lower on a year over year basis. 149 homes are for sale as of October 31, ’07 compared with 166 in October, ’06. Closings and sales are relatively stable at 8 and 10 respectively for October ’07 compared to 12 and 13 for October ’06. It seems the discretionary nature of buyers and sellers in these smaller, higher priced markets allows the local trends to buck the larger macro trends.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of October fell for the first time in nine months. As of October 31, 2553 homes were available for sale compared to 2784 at the end of September. For every net new listing in October, there were two closings and/or new sales. This trend can be expected to continue in the coming months. The median, average, and average price per square foot for the 217 homes that closed in October were all lower. The average asking price for all homes in the County stands at $724,000 and properties are selling at roughly 96% of there last listing price.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of October fell for the first time in nine months. As of October 31, 237 homes were available for sale compared to 255 at the end of September. For every net new listing in October, there were seven closings, and/or new sales. This trend can be expected to continue in the coming months. New sales (13) in Sonoma for the month of October were the same as last month, but were down from 27 a year ago. The median price of the eight homes closed in October was $705,000 compared to $662,000 a year ago for twenty homes, but the sample is relatively small and probably not indicative of overall values in the area.

Healdsburg Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of October fell for the first time in nine months. Closings and new sales outpaced net new listings by about 2 to 1 for the month of October. As of October 31, 96 homes were available for sale compared to 101 at the end of September and 90 at the end of October, 2006. Closings were down to five for the month compared to 12 in September and 16 a year ago. New sales were up to 8 compared to 5 last month and 12 a year ago.

Windsor Trends: Closings and new sales outpaced net new listings by about 2 to 1 for the month of October. As of October 31, 163 homes were available for sale compared to 171 at the end of September and 117 at the end of October, 2006. Closings were down to 10 for the month compared to 12 in September and 32 a year ago. There were 9 new sales in the month compared to 12 last month and 30 a year ago. The median price for the ten homes closed in October was $620,000 compared to $527000 a year ago, but the price per square foot for those homes was $268/sf compared to $328/sf a year ago.

Cloverdale Trends: Inventory in Cloverdale at the end of October was preety steady compared to the last six months. 100 homes are available compared to 106 in September and 86 a year ago. There wan only one net new sale in the month of October – compared to 14 a year ago. We can surely expect this to improve in the coming months..


Closings: Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the period of 11/5 to 11/23: Herb Heil (Sonoma), Chuck Post (Sonoma), Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood), Sheila Whitney (Sonoma), Cheri Stanley (Napa), Kendra Martin (Sonoma), Helaine Forte ( Sonoma), Carol Lexa (Healdsburg), Daniel Casabonne (Sonoma), Susan Irvine (Sonoma), Dee Grohmann, Lisa Ehreth and Rico Ruthnick (The Grove - Healdsburg). And Mari Johnson in our Sonoma office had three closings over this period. Congratulations to all!

Diane and I will be visitng family in Minnesota from tomorrow, the 29th, until December 4th. I will have cell phone and e-mail access, but if you need direct and immediate broker assistance, please check with Earl or Scott Rader. Thanks, and have a great week.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven". -John Milton (1608-1674) [Paradise Lost]

Frame of Mind Coaching: Kim Ades of Opening Doors has developed a coaching practice that revolves around an individual's thoughts (frame of mind) and works to develop a “mind muscle” that is formulated on the following seven elements. In her experience, these attributes combine to create “Emotional Resilience” – the single highest determiner of success in real estate sales. Top performing agents have:

1. Heightened awareness: They have an awareness of thoughts and beliefs that are not serving them, and they have the means to shift those thoughts and beliefs.
2. Continuous practice: They engage in thoughts that are self serving (that help them achieve their goals) and lead to a focused frame of mind. They have a propensity for happiness and good daily practices and habits.
3. Focused actions: Top performers take action regardless of fear - they are self motivated. What they focus on is what materializes. They look for the opportunities and engage in, and take, inspired action.
4. Dedicated daily writing: Top performers use this form of writing to move themselves and their career forward. Why? Because when it is in writing there is a higher likelihood of it materializing and it has a direction. It’s like having a business plan. When it’s in writing, it’s not fleeting, it has more permanency.
5. Community of like minded people: They have a natural tendency to reach for people who are healthy and supportive, and help them to move forward in your path. The books they read, the conversations they have, their associations, the seminars they attend, all attest to their open mindedness and desire to learn and grow, connect and support.
6. Infrastructure: Top performers are part of a team. They have a willingness to share and support others, a cooperative spirit. They also have a positive and supportive structure to support them. They have a strong sense of accountability to themselves.
7. Commitment to living from the heart: Top performers have a sense of passion and a commitment to that passion. The true benefit to developing the mind muscle is that one develops a mind/heart connection. When one truly lives from their heart, they enable themselves to accomplish all that is within their heart to accomplish. They are, in fact, allowing themselves to achieve success.
For more of Kim’s insights, visit her website: www.openingdoors.tv.

Is it a Perception Market or is it the Economy?: Steve Murray, Founder of Real Trends, makes a strong case that we are experiencing a “Perception Market” that is resulting in a reluctance of buyers to buy. His position is that, unlike the last down cycle (1990-95), most economic factors are positive: low unemployment; rising incomes; and relatively low interest rates. He, and many others in the industry, believe that the consumer is being bombarded with “bad news” and as a result, is in a state of inaction.

Dr. Chris Thornberg, Principal of Beacon Economics, on the other hand, made a presentation last Friday entitled “Housing and the Economy – from Bad to Worse” in which he forecast a 75% probability of a recession in 2008. The slides for his presentation can be viewed at www.sonoma-county.org/edb/reports.htm and, once on that page, click on “California Outlook 2008”.

I find slides 11 and 12 particularly interesting. On the bottom slide on pg. 11, there is a graph of the US Ratio of Median House Price to Median Household Income. For the period 1960 to 2000, that ratio was equal to, or below, 3.5 times. In 2005, it approached 4.75. On page 12, the top chart indicates the “Affordability” of housing based on the Federal Housing Administration definition. In 1989, the average household in Alameda earned 83% of the amount needed to “afford” the median priced home. It’s not a surprise that 1989 was the last housing peak. In 1999, the average household in Alameda earned 138% of the amount needed to “afford” the median priced home. What did they do? They went on a buying binge with their excess income. This year, 2007, the average household in Alameda is earning only 66% of the amount needed to “afford” the median priced home. Is it any surprise that their brakes are on? This ratio varies for different regional areas, but, in my view, either incomes have to go up, or prices have to come down. Look at the “Deviation” graph on page 11 of the Thornberg “Outlook”.

Whether you fall into the “Perception” or “Economics 101” group, one thing is sure for our industry. We need to let the public know that homes are selling.

Feature "Sold" Properties in Your "For Sale" Properties Classifieds

As stated in the San Francisco Realtors Association Newsletter:  "What can REALTORS® do to counter the public perception that real property listed for sale today does not sell? One suggestion comes from Alex Perriello, CEO of Realogy’s Franchise Group: Feature "Sold" properties in your "For Sale" properties classifieds. Perriello suggests featuring one sold property for every five listings featured in classifieds or homes magazines. Consumers who see only a growing spread of "For Sale" properties are inclined to think that nothing is selling. Of course, this is not true. Perriello does not suggest increasing advertising budgets, just allocating about 20 percent of the space you have to featuring "Sold" properties, so that consumers can see that properties are selling".

I’ve developed a “Listings to Sales” ratio. Last month, in Napa County, for every three new listings there were two new sales. In Sonoma County last month, for every 5 new listings there were 2 new sales. My prediction is that in the coming months, the number os sales per month will exceed the number of new listings per month. This is great news – our job is to spread it. I’ll send along the statistics as they come up.

Tenth Anniversay Celebration: Our agents and staff have all received an invitation to a cocktail party celebrating our tenth anniversary as Frank Howard Allen Realtors, the Wine Country Group.  Frank Howard Allen Realtors actually celebrates it's 100 year anniversary in 2010.  Our celebration will be held at the Sonoma Lodge on December 15th. We look forward to celebrating with the individuals with whom we work every day and we are delighted to recognize and celebrate with the individuals who support us in our efforts – our spouses, significant others and friends.

500 Property Websites: Congratulations to our agents and staff in reaching the milestone in the past nine months of creating 500 property websites supporting the marketing of our listings. This listing feature, offered at no charge to our agents, has proven to be an extremely effective marketing and listing tool. Well done by all of our staff behind the scenes and our agents out front representing the properties. Allyson, our lead staff person for website marketing, is taking increased awareness that these sites are to be distinct marketing efforts, and not just a repetition of the photos and copy in the MLS. Keep up the great work.

Education: On March 1, 2008, the DRE regulations change and 45 hours of licensing education to renew your license will take you 45 hours. Until then, you can do what we have been doing for the past decade, or more, – do 45 hours of education in four hours – Oh My! Anyway, the Napa Chapter of NorBar is presenting a program on 1/15 for you to complete your education requirements for the next renewal of your license. It’s Duane Gomer, and he is always good, so plan on it if you can. Call Lani Burglin at 254-4500, or check with your local NorBar chapter about alternative classes.

Auctioning REO Properties: Eleven of our current listings have been pulled into an auction of Northern California lender owned properties. This auction will be held next weekend on November 16th and 17th in San Ramon. Details about the auction can be found on the website: www.hudsonandmarshall.com. Buyer’s agents can earn a 2% fee for representing buyers in this auction - so get your buyer’s involved and registered!. I want to acknowledge Cheri Stanley for the incredible effort that she is putting forth to service the many listings that she is representing throughout the area. It’s takes a huge amount of work to communicate with the owner representatives handling these properties and to respond responsibly to agent and buyer inquires and offers. With the help of our agents, Cheri has all eleven listings open this weekend. Well done!

Closings: Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the weeks of 10/15 to 11/2: Kent Mitchell (Healdsburg), Gunter Pirchner (Napa), Julianna Anshutz (Kenwood), Joyce Davison (Sonoma), Cheri Stanley (Napa), Mary Beth Foster (Sonoma), Herb Heil ( Sonoma), Erin George (Sonoma), Frank Trozzo (Napa), Jana Jones (Healdsburg), Barbara Sommerville (Sonoma). The following agents had two sides during this period: Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker (Kenwood), Lisa Albertson (Healdsburg/Sonoma), Pat and Norm Brown. Carol Lexa in our Healdsburg office had three closings over this period and Kendra Martin in our Sonoma office set the high water mark by having four closings during this period.

Congratulations to all!

Abelina Magana: “Abelina is my mom, and i am very proud to say that. There is tons of reasons why, like for example she was there when I was sick. She was there was I mad, and she was there, just because. I love her, and im also proud to say that, and she loves us too. She always is happy, and she always loved to have fun. I ask for you to pray for her and send her all your good energy, because i want her to get better as soon as possible.”

Abelina is a colleague of ours. A real estate agent in the Novato office of Frank Howard Allen Realtors. On Friday, she was shot and critically wounded by her husband who then killed himself. Two of their three children were present. She continues on life support and in critical care. Diana Tate of our Sonoma office is caring for Abelina’s three children through the initial stages of this ordeal. Many, many colleagues are helping with food, transportation, funds, etc. If you wish to assist, you can contact Diana at dtate@winecountrygroup.com. Also, Frank Howard Allen Realtors has established a matching contribution (to $10,000) trust fund for the Magana family at the Bank of Marin, 1450 Grant Ave., Novato 94945. As Abelina’s son asks above, please do keep good thoughts and a prayer in your heart for her.

Market Update – Wine Country: Some of you saw the Napa County update in the Broker News that I sent around on Wednesday. Here’s some thoughts covering the various market areas in which we have offices:

Napa County Trends: Sales and closings for the month of September in Napa County reached their lowest levels in the past three years. On a year to year basis, new sales (53) were off 49% from a year ago and closings (46) in the month of September were down 52% from a year ago. On a month to month basis, sales were down 14% while closings were down 31%. It seems that in September there were more sales in the lower priced end of the market as both the median and average sales prices of sold homes fell substantially, also reflecting three year lows. Perhaps the summer sales (June-July) that closed in September reflected a trend towards the lower priced end of the market as that sector has been weak for much of the year. Of the 1183 homes in Napa County in the local MLS system as available, contingent, or pending, 11%, or 127 of them are identified as “REO, Notice of Default filed, or Short Sale”. In American Canyon, of the 204 homes in the MLS as available, contingent, or pending, 32%, or 65 of them are identified as “REO, Notice of Default filed, or Short Sale”. These are certainly numbers that we haven’t seen before. It will be interesting to follow the trends forward and see if buyers start to take advantage of the lower prices or if they stay on the sidelines. Call me for more detail or to discuss the current local trends.

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) is continuing to buck the inventory trends by having a lower inventory on a year over year basis. 160 homes were for sale as of Sept. 30, ’07 compared with 170 in Sept., ’06. Closings and sales dropped in September to just six closings for the month compared to 22 a year ago. New sales were down to 9 from 18 a year ago. It’s not uncommon to see closings and sales in the single digits in the Up Valley market in the months of December through February, we’ll see how it goes in the coming months. Call me for more detail or to discuss the current local trends.


Sonoma County Trends: Sales and closings for the month of September in Sonoma County reached their lowest levels in the past three years. The local newspaper (Press Democrat) reported that they were the lowest in 16 years. On a year to year basis, new sales (207) were off 45% from a year ago and closings (212) in the month of September were down 42% from a year ago. On a month to month basis, sales were down 28% while closings were down 31%. Both median and average sales prices were down for the period, but not dramatically so. It will be interesting to follow the trends forward and see if buyers start to take advantage of the lower prices or if they stay on the sidelines. Call me for more detail or to discuss the current local trends.


Sonoma Valley Trends: Sales and closings for the month of September in the Sonoma Valley reached their lowest levels since January of this year. On a year to year basis, new sales (13) were off 52% from a year ago and closings (15) in the month of September were down 53% from a year ago. On a month to month basis, sales were down 38% while closings were down 25%. Perhaps the summer sales (June-July) reflected a traditional slow down in summer activity. It will be interesting to see if the fall market responds. Call me for more detail or to discuss the current local trends..


Healdsburg Trends: The Healdsburg inventory of available homes for sale is the same as it was a year ago – 101 homes. Closings and sales were down from last year with 9 and 5 respectively for September ’07 compared to 12 and 13 for September ’06. Perhaps the summer sales (June-July) reflected a traditional slow down in summer activity. It will be interesting to see if the fall market responds. Call me for more detail or to discuss the current trends.


Windsor Trends: Inventory of available homes jumped to a three year high of 171 units in Windsor at the end of September. New sales (12) fell to 56% of what they were a year ago and 33% of what they were in August ’07. Closings (11), similarly, fell to 54% of what they were a year ago and 54% of what they were last month. The median sales price in September was the lowest in the past three years. It will be interesting to follow the trends forward and see if buyers start to take advantage of the lower prices or if they stay on the sidelines.. Call me for more detail or to discuss the current trends.


Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale in Cloverdale (106) at the end of September started to ease though there were 16 more homes for sale than there were a year ago. Closings and sales are steady at 4 and 7 respectively for September ’07 compared to 6 and 8 for September ’06. Selling prices for homes in Cloverdale closely mirror the asking prices for homes – so, the market seems pretty well balanced, though heavy in inventory. Call me for more detail or to discuss the current trends

Legal Update: On Tuesday, we had the second of our Fall series of Legal Updates. Some of the tips that I picked up include:
1. Good info on short sales and foreclosures at CAR.org – legal – short sales and foreclosures.
2. CAR has a “short sale listing addendum” and a “short sale addendum” will be released in the November forms update.
3. Assume listings may be a short sale – get a property profile prior to uploading the listing.
4. It’s okay to state in “confidential remarks” that “short sale commission to be split 50-50 between listing and selling agents”.
5. An affirmative representation by an agent will “trump” all the standard, blanket disclaimers.
6. “Characterizations” of a property can turn out to be representations.
7. Avoid “creative contract writing”. Use standard forms, or see your manager/broker.
8. The current interpretation of Standard of Care for a real estate agent in a residential transaction includes “neighborhood awareness”. If you are going into neighborhoods that you know nothing about, our attorney’s counsel is to “Stay Home” – refer the business to a local.
9. Use the AVID (Agent Visual Inspection Disclosure) form.
10. Be careful in recommending handypersons, etc. Licensed and insured individuals are important.

Post some things that you might of picked up that I didn’t mention.

CAR 2008 Annual Forecast: Most of you have probably read reports on CAR’s annual forecast for 2008 that was released last week at CAR’s fall meetings in Long Beach. On a statewide basis, the Association’s economists are predicting a 9% reduction in sales to 334,500, a 46% drop from the peak sales figures in 2005. The median price for resales of single family homes is expected to drop 4% next year on a statewide basis. A good thing in the forecast is that mortgage rates are expected to remain stable at 6.5% for 30 yr fixed rate loans.

So, what are some reasons that it is a great time to buy real estate?
1. Selection – There is are a lot of options from which to choose.
2. Fewer bidding wars – If you take out the REO auctions that we are going to see (more on that in a moment), there is far less competitive bidding in this buyer’s market.
3. Buyers can make and offer – if it doesn’t fly, move on to the next one.
4. Patience is acceptable in this market. Sellers welcome a buyer whenever they show up.
5. Due diligence is welcome and repair requests are respected – that’s a change!
6. Plenty of builder spec homes if you want a new one.
7. Buyer’s who are owner occupants aren’t competing with investors for prime properties.
8. Financing is excellent – still low if one looks over the past thirty years.

I’m planning to talk up these factors, and more, as to why it is a good time to buy. To view CAR’s full forecast visit www.car.org.

REO Auction Coming to the North Bay: We presently have about 35 REO listings in our inventory of 250 homes for sale. If you are looking for a deal, give us a call. Eight of our REO listings in Napa and Solano counties are being placed in a pool of properties to be auctioned off in an auction to be held around 11/15 by Hudson and Marshall. The auction will take place in Concord or Walnut Creek – they are nailing down the details. Keep yourself posted on www.hudsonandmarshall.com. An agent registering a successful bidder in the auction has the opportunity to earn a 2% commission – so get out there and call your bargain hunter clients and take them to the auction.

Ten Year Anniversary and Holiday Celebration: Agents of the Wine Country Group should circle the date of 12/15. In cooperation with the “core company” of Frank Howard Allen Realtors, the Wine Country Group will be celebrating ten years as an licensee with FHA. I fondly remember the December day when we went out to the old clubhouse at the Sonoma Golf Club to announce our new affiliation. You will be receiving an invitation for you and your spouse/significant other to join us from 5:30 to 7:30 at the Lodge at Sonoma. In the meantime, reserve the date and time in your calendar.

Weekly Closings: Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the week of 9/24 to 10/14: Erick Rothfeld, Nancy Gillespie, Bill Streett, Tiffany Knef, Constance Sharpe, Jeff Veness, Linda Alioto, Barbara Sommerville, Chuck Post, Charlee Schanzer, Tom Lawrence, Corrie Sterbentz, Lisa Albertson, Michel Boucher, Howard Powell and Ron and Jane Pavelka. Randy Haak, Kendra Martin and Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker each double ended a transaction this week. The following agents had two closings during this period: Isaac Raboy and Carol Lexa. And the following closed three sales during this three week period: Daniel Casabonne, Cheri Stanley and the team at the Groves of Healdsburg: Lisa Ehreth, Dee Grohmann and Rico Ruthnick. Well done by all!

Equity in Life: Well, our empty nest phase was postponed by a few days by a visit from our son for the weekend. As I was driving Andrew to the Airporter at 5:30 AM on Tuesday morning he remarked: “I’ve been thinking about building equity in my life”. Shaking the lingering sleepiness from my brain, I asked him what that meant to him. He replied that he wanted to build equity in his friendships, equity in his education, equity in his business contacts and relationships. Equity in all parts of his life. I am very impressed that this young man came up with such an original concept and started thinking about it myself.

Later in the morning, I had the pleasure of welcoming two agents who were joining our Sonoma office and I explained Andrew’s “Equity in Life” concept and how I believe it applied in this case. I said that, in my view, these two excellent agents and excellent individuals are adding to the “equity” of the agent/staff community that we have in the Sonoma office and, broader, in the Wine Country Group. Thanks, Andrew, and welcome to Sheila Deignan and Kathy Grant. Also welcome to Juan Gallegos and Marianne Young – building equity in our Napa office.

Comic: Perhaps you saw the comic in the Press Democrat, or your local paper, on September 5th. Two women are in a market pausing from their shopping to speak. One says: “I’m worried about my son. I wish he had chosen and easier profession.” The other responds: “So he wants to be an actor?” And the first replies: “No, a Realtor.”

So the public is painting a picture for us - but we still have our attitude! Linda Watson, Area Manager for First American Home Buyers Protection Corporation (I’ll give her a plug: www.firstam.com/warranty), stopped in today and mentioned that she had recently attended a Brian Buffini seminar and Brian’s opinion is that: “the market is great!” Or as my partner, Earl Shuttleworth, responds to the question: “How’s business?” – Answer, a rousing: “UNBELIEVABLE”. As Linda pointed out – as a client, would you rather work with someone who’s in the dumps about what they are doing and considering “getting out”, or work with someone who is busy, excited about what they are doing and looking for the next opportunity? I know what my answer is.

I’m excited As of 9/24, the WCG has $237,000,000 in listing inventory – 270 properties. More than we have ever had. Look at all that business in our futures!

Upcoming Training: Frank Howard Allen’s Bulls-eye Sales Training begins Oct. 2 – call me if you need info about it. The final Legal Update of the Fall is on October 16 from 9:00 to 11:00 at the Petaluma Community Center– be there, or be square (also required for our E & O insurance). And catch up on the latest real estate technology tools at the NorBAR Technology Faire this Friday, September 28 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Vereran’s Memorial Hall in Santa Rosa.

Surfing and Selling: The Seventh and final Installment: Thanks, again to Robert Graham for allowing me to present his seven “Surfing and Selling” ideas. I hope that you have enjoyed them. Robert Graham is the Principal of GrahamComm (www.grahamcomm.net), a consulting and training company that helps clients increase their sales and deliver outstanding presentations. He can be reached at 415-652-0763 or Robert@grahamcomm.net.

7. You're never more fired up than when you've had a great ride. Every time I said to myself, "Just one more good wave," I'd find myself paddling back out to catch just one more.

Selling lesson: There's never a better time to make a sales call than after you have made a sale. Celebrate your success; then get right back on the phone while you are still hot, confident and feeling it, and make another call.

iAnnex e-Flyers: I’ve heard that some of you are not receiving your own iAnnex e-flyers, nor those from other agents. This most likely has to do with your spam filters. Set your spam filters to allow mail from iAnnex and it should solve the problem – Frank can help you out if you give him a call. I get twenty or so of these flyers a day and I usually look at one or two, but I always look at those from our WCG agents – and they look great!

Enhanced Agent Website feature: Lourdes has enhanced our Agent Website templates to better assure that visitors to your web site that want to search the IDX database register themselves with you as your agent. Before the “search for properties” button, there now is a new message: “To ensure a prompt response, please be sure to select me as your Frank Howard Allen – Wine Country Group Agent when Scheduling a Showing or Requesting More Information.” We hope that this helps you secure more internet leads from your personal FHA-WCG website. Call me if you have any questions.

SureClose Phone Log: Our attorneys emphasize to us over and over again to keep a complete “transaction log” relative to our transactions. SureClose, our on-line escrow management system has an easy place for you to record notes of meetings or phone conversations directly into your SureClose transaction file. Frank is preparing a guide to easily get you onto this “notes” page where everything will be time dated and saved automatically. When he posts the directions on the WCG Intranet – I’ll give you another heads up.

By the way – we’re thinking of renaming our WCG Intranet. Maybe a bottle of wine for the best idea. So far we have “myWCG.com” and “getaclue.com” (Frank’s suggestion) – anyway, hit comment at the bottom of this blog posting and send me your ideas. I’ll award a bottle of fine Mayo Cab to the winner.

Weekly Closings: Congratulations, first, to Tom Lawrence. Tom served as the manager of our Windsor office for the past half dozen years and has always been a productive sales agent. He was recently recognized by our Realtors association for 35 years of service to the industry. Well done.

Also, congratulations to the following agents for closings during the week of 9/17 to 9/21: Steve and Marla Ericson; Penelope La Montagne; Frank Trozzo; Joyce Davison; Diane Krause; Daniel Casabonne and Jana Jones. Mary Beth Foster, Herb Heil and Dan Gallagher each double ended a transaction this week. Lisa Ehreth, Dee Grohmann and Rico Ruthnick shared a closing in the Groves of Healdsburg development and Rico had a closing on an additional transaction as well. Well done by all!

Empty Nesting: Part of our “Who We Are” statement says that we “…help our clients with transitions that involve how and where they live and work.” Well, Diane and I are going through one of those transitions – becoming “empty nesters”. Sophie leaves this Friday for college and the house will no longer echo with teenagers in the middle of the night in the refrigerator or using the microwave. She won’t be there to give us hugs or smiles either. So, if you see us and we look a little lost, or like we might need some “help”, don’t forget our commitment to be there for our clients as their lives change.

Facts and Trends – A TrendGraphix exclusive to Frank Howard Allen Realtors – the Wine County Group: Here’s my latest analysis of our Wine Country markets based on the most recent TrendGraphix data:

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of August started to fall as the summer selling season reached its end. As of August 31, 879 homes were available for sale compared to 905 for July. Despite the month over month decline, the year over year inventory was 9% higher than August, 2006. Closings and sales were both lower than a year ago. 57 homes closed in August ’07 and 63 new sales occurred. In August, 2006, 83 homes closed and 90 new sales occurred. An interesting pattern has developed in viewing average asking prices versus average sold prices in the County. In 12/06, the spread between average asking price ($1,220,000) and average sold price ($696,000) was $524,000. It has been narrowing since that time and was the narrowest last month at $150,000 ($1,034,000 asking price and $884,000 sold price). There may still be some slack to be made up in this area as in Sonoma County that spread was just $26,000 in August ($729,000 asking price, $703,000 sold price).

St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) remains one of only two of our Wine Country markets (the other being Healdsburg) where inventory is lower on a year over year basis. 150 homes are for sale as of August 31, ’07 compared with 162 in August, ’06. Closings were up higher in August ’07 over a year ago (14 compared to 12) but new sales fell to 9 compared to 16 in August, ’06. An interesting pattern has developed in viewing average asking prices versus average sold prices in the Up Valley area. In 12/06, the spread between average asking price ($2,166,000) and average sold price ($1,055,000) was $1,111,000. It has varied since that time and was the narrowest last month at $379,000 ($1,779,000 asking price and $1,400,000 sold price). There may still be some slack to be made up in this area in order to keep up the sales volume.

Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of August continued to rise as the summer selling season reached it’s peak. As of August 31, 2,702 homes were available for sale compared to 2636 at this time a year ago – and increase of 7%. Closings and sales were both substantially lower on a year to year basis. For August ’07, 308 homes closed and 285 went pending compared to 429 closed and 406 pended in ’06. That’s a decrease in closings of 28% and a decrease in pended sales of 42%. The average price per square foot of homes sold in August ’07 was $376/sf, off 3% from the average price per square foot in August ’06. So, the decline in prices is not as dramatic as the decline in units selling and sold. An interesting pattern has developed in viewing average asking prices versus average sold prices in the county. In 2/07, the spread between average asking price ($804,000) and average sold price ($618,000) was $186,000. It has steadily narrowed since that time and the spread last month was just $26,000 ($729,000 asking price and $703,000 sold price). Certainly it appears that current sellers, at least in Sonoma County, are understanding and pricing to the market.

Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of August, 2007 continued to rise as the summer selling season reached it’s peak. Inventory typically reaches its highest level in August. As of August 31, 239 homes were available which was the same as this time a year ago. Closings and sales were slightly down on a year over year basis. For August ’07, 20 homes closed and 21 went pending compared to 25 closed and 25 pended in August ’06. The average selling price ($1,063,000) of homes sold in August actually exceeded the average asking price ($970,000) of all homes on the market which would indicate that more homes are selling at the high end than in the medium and lower price ranges.

Healdsburg Trends: The Healdsburg market remains one of only two of our Wine Country markets (the other being St. Helena/Up Valley) where inventory is lower on a year over year basis. 93 homes are for sale as of August 31, ’07 compared with 104 in August, ’06. Unlike our other markets, closings and sales are higher at 17 and 13 respectively for August ’07 compared to 10 and 12 for August ’06. The average price ($885,000) of homes sold in August ’07 was significantly higher than the medium ($600,000) of those sold homes. And, the average asking price ($1,112,000) of available homes was even higher indicating a wide spread in available price ranges.

Windsor Trends: The inventory of available homes for sale reached156 at the end of August ’07 compared to 146 available in August ’06. Closings and sales are both down at 27 and 18 respectively for August ’07 compared to 30 and 31 for August ’06. That’s a 42% decline in sales pended year over year. The average price per square foot of the homes sold in Windsor in August ’07 was $328. A 5% decline from August ’06. The median price of sold homes was just 1% lower than a year ago, $570,000 compared to $577,000.

Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of available homes for sale (112) in Cloverdale reached a twelve month high at the end of August ’07 compared to 101 available in August ’06. Closings and sales are down slightly at 8 and 9 respectively for August ’07 compared to 12 and 10 for August ’06. The price per square foot of the 8 homes sold in Cloverdale in August ’07 was $286/sf. The price per square foot stood at $336/sf a year ago and $287/sf last month. This represents a decrease of per square foot price of 15% on a year over year basis. At the same time the median price of the sold homes in August was +1% year over year. This would seem to indicate that larger homes are selling at lower per square foot values.

BAREIS Rules and Regs: BAREIS staff is being very diligent about monitoring the Public Comments and other sections of our listings to see that they conform to the BAREIS rules. Here is an excerpt from an e-mail to one of our agents regarding their listing:

“The public remarks field is only for a physical description of the property and home. We do not allow showing information (such as: Do not disturb tenants), financial information, website addresses, open house information, confidential information meant for other Agents only, or any information that goes beyond a physical description.

The photo comments are meant to describe the selected picture only. Currently you have “Do not go on property” and “Call agent for info” as well as “Current tenant is moving out” in the photo comments on the first photo. Any comments not describing the photo should be removed.

The Directions field is meant for directions to the property, not for showing instructions. Currently, you have “Do NOT go on property. Call agent. House is in poor condition, stairs are broken.” This information should be replaced with either the directions to the property – or an X or period (.).

If the property is a danger and people should not enter the property without instructions/guidance, you may want to think about only allowing “Partial” on Address to Internet (in the Listing Information). This will only show the City and County of the property, and will not give the actual address to the public”.

The fine for violating these rules can be $500.00, so please be aware of, and follow, the BAREIS guidelines.

Surfing and Selling: Sixth Installment: Robert Graham is the Principal of GrahamComm (www.grahamcomm.net), a consulting and training company that helps clients increase their sales and deliver outstanding presentations. He can be reached at 415-652-0763 or Robert@grahamcomm.net. Robert has a monthly newsletter on his website “Speaking and Sales Success” and he recently wrote a piece on seven things he discovered in common between surfing and selling. I’m going to include one of his points in each of my next seven blog postings. Point #6 (and I believe this is a really important one):

When you finally catch a wave, stand up and enjoy it: This is why you go through all the abuse of paddling out through the waves, swallowing seawater and dealing with the bruises and scrapes.

Selling lesson: Celebrate your sales. Spend some money, pat yourself on the back, brag about your work (especially to your manager).

Weekly Closings: Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the weeks of 9/03 to 9/14 (it’s been very busy – just ask Regina, Sharon, Dina and Lori!): First, I want to congratulate three agents who had their first closings with FHA-WCG: Heidi Diamantini of our Healdsburg office had her “one and only ever to be” first closing as a real estate agent – 3 Cheers! Mike Caselli had his first closing since joining our Sonoma office and Nicki Rector had her first closing since rejoining our firm in Healdsburg. Others with closings during this period include: Deke DeKay and Diane Harris; Beth Bruno; Rob Pursell; Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker; Carol Lexa; Jeff Veness; Ann Amtower; Pat Brown; Mari Johnson; Lisa Albertson; Nancy Gillespie; and Hank Lane. Diane Litchfield and Dianne Delfino had two units each during this period. Lisa Ehreth, Dee Grohmann and Rico Ruthnick shared three closings at the Grove in Healdsburg. And, rounding it out with four units each for this period were Dan Casabonne and Ron and Jane Pavelka. Well done by all!

Changes: I used this quote from Washington Irving in our Sales Meeting Agendas this week: “There is a certain relief in change even though it may be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling by stagecoach, it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.”

I sense that there is some “bruising” going on among some of our agents. And, among other colleagues that I speak to as well. All I can do is encourage them to look for that comfort that shifting one’s position might provide. Our “position” might be our attitude, our work habits, our distractions, our lack of focus…shift our position and see what develops. Our overall business is ahead of where is was a year ago, and our company has lowered our overhead expenses and costs – so, “on the other side” of this market is another market. I see opportunities in both..

Frank Howard Allen Realtors, The Wine Country Group, enters into Marketing Services Agreement with Countrywide Home Loans: The feedback on our new relationship with Countrywide Home Loans has been great so far. In attending our sales meetings this week, both Cheris and Kevin mentioned a trend for sellers and buyers to consider loan rate “buy downs”. A 2-1 buy down program seems to be popular – the rate is 2% lower in the first year and 1% lower in the second year. It assists in the affordability of the loan and sellers may consider offering a buy down in lieu of a price reduction.

Our CWHL agents can prepare a sample Closing Cost Estimate sheet for you if you or your client has an interest in exploring this idea.

By the way, if you or your clients are looking for some facts and figures about the breath and scope of Countrywide's business, please take a look at this fact sheet. One interesting fact on the sheet is that they do about 125,000 loan fundings per month. That’s a lot!

Bullseye Sales Training Announced: As mentioned in the last Broker Blog posting, the Contract Training runs from September 21 and continues through Monday, October 15. The next Bullseye Sales Training is scheduled as follows: Every Tuesday from 1:30 to 3:30 pm beginning October 2 through November 13th in the Greenbrae Frank Howard Allen Realtors office. The sessions include the following topics: The importance of Attitude; Working with Buyers; The importance of written weekly and daily plans; Lead generating activities; Building your business; Calls to your database and prospects; Developing relationships with your clients and prospects; Setting goals and tracking your activities. In my opinion, they are all excellent topics. Call for me or speak to your manager for more details.

Surfing and Selling: Fifth Installment: Robert Graham is the Principal of GrahamComm (www.grahamcomm.net), a consulting and training company that helps clients increase their sales and deliver outstanding presentations. He can be reached at 415-652-0763 or Robert@grahamcomm.net. Robert has a monthly newsletter on his website “Speaking and Sales Success” and he recently wrote a piece on seven things he discovered in common between surfing and selling. I’m going to include one of his points in each of my next seven blog postings. Point #5:

Paddle hard to catch the waves. One of the reasons the good surfers catch so many waves is that they paddle furiously to catch them.

Selling lesson: If you have a good, qualified prospect, go after them with all you have. Assume that they won't call back, and go on the offensive - in a gently persistent way, of course.

Weekly Closings: Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the week of 8/27 to 8/31: Erica Linn; Bob Beckstrom, Steve and Marla Ericson; Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker; Frank Trozzo; Dee Grohmann; and Kendra Martin. Kent Mitchell double ended a transaction during this period. Well done by all!

I’m heading out of town tomorrow for a week. I will have cell and e-mail communication, but if you need immediate broker response, Earl is in town and available.

Wine Country Market Overview: Here’s my latest interpretation of the Trendgraphix data for existing home sales in our Wine Country markets:

Napa County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of July continued to rise as the summer selling season nears it’s peak. Inventory typically reaches its highest level in August. As of July 31, 906 homes were available for sale compared to 767 at this time a year ago – an increase of 18% year over year. Sales were down on a year to year basis: 61 homes closed in June ’07 and 63 new sales occurred. Months of inventory reached a twelve month high at 14.4 months and Average Asking Price reached a twelve month low of $1,053,000. This trend may presage lower median prices in the months ahead, though we don’t expect a significant decrease.


St. Helena/Up Valley Trends: The St. Helena/Up Valley market (Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Rutherford, St. Helena and Yountville) is bucking the inventory trends by having a lower inventory on a year over year basis. 155 homes were for sale as of July 31, ’07 compared with 171 in July, ’06 – a 9% decrease. Closings and sales are steady at 14 and 15 respectively for July ’07 compared to 16 and 13 for July ’06. The Up Valley market contains a 10.3 month supply of inventory based on current sales and inventory.


Sonoma County Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of June continued to rise as the summer selling season nears it’s peak. Inventory typically reaches its highest level in August. As of July 31, 2,561 homes were available for sale compared to 2,468 at this time a year ago – an increase of 3.7%. Closings and sales were both off on a year to year basis. For July ’07, 307 homes closed and 311 went pending compared to 336 closed and 356 pended in ’06. That’s a decrease in closings of 8.6% and a decrease in pended sales of 12%. The median price of existing sold homes was off a modest 1.5% on a year to year basis.


Sonoma Valley Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of July were very close to that of a year ago – 222 homes this year and 220 in 2006. Closings and sales were very steady on a year over year basis. For July ’07, 32 homes closed and 26 went pending compared to 26 closed and 29 pended in July ’06. The median price of existing homes sold in the Sonoma Valley in July ’07 was $796,000, 3.1% less than the median of $822,000 a year ago.


Healdsburg Trends: The Healdsburg inventory of available homes for sale is bucking the regional trend as it is lower on a year over year basis. 88 homes are for sale as of July 31, ’07 compared with 103 in July, ’06. Closings and sales are ahead of last year with 14 and 19 respectively for July ’07 compared to 10 and 6 for July ’06. Healdsburg varies from other markets in that there are only 4.6 months of available inventory vs. 10, 14 and 18 in some of the other markets that we serve.


Windsor Trends: Things seem to be stabilizing in Windsor. Inventory of available homes for sale was 148 at the end of July ’07 compared to 157 available in July ’06. Closings and sales are steady at 18 and 21 respectively for July ’07 compared to 21 and 19 for July ’06. The price per square foot of the 18 homes sold in Windsor in July ’07 was $328 compared to $365 in 6/07 and $358 in 7/06.


Cloverdale Trends: The inventory of homes for sale at the end of July continued to rise as the summer selling season nears it’s peak. Inventory typically reaches its highest level in August. As of July 31, 107 homes were available for sale compared to 93 at this time a year ago – an increase of 15% year over year.. Closings and sales are steady at 10 and 11 respectively for July ’07 compared to 9 and 10 for July ’06. The price per square foot of the 10 homes sold in Cloverdale in July ’07 was $287/sf, a slight bump up from the low of $281 in June, ’07, but a 7% decrease from $310 in July ’06.

Surfing and Selling: Third Installment: Robert Graham is the Principal of GrahamComm (www.grahamcomm.net), a consulting and training company that helps clients increase their sales and deliver outstanding presentations. He can be reached at 415-652-0763 or Robert@grahamcomm.net. Robert has a monthly newsletter on his website “Speaking and Sales Success” and he recently wrote a piece on seven things he discovered in common between surfing and selling. I’m going to include one of his points in each of my next seven blog postings. Point # 3:

Position yourself well. If you're too far inside the breaking waves, you'll get crushed. If you're too far out, you'll never catch them. The people who catch the most waves are the ones that paddle to the wave instead of waiting for it to come to them.

Selling lesson: Put yourself in a position where it's easy for your customers to do business with you. Get on their radar regularly giving value, newsletters, ideas, gifts and invitations.

Weekly Closings: Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the week of 8/06 to 8/10: Roger Olson; Scott Rader; Charlotte Schanzer; Holly Lee; Ron and Jane Pavelka; Erick Rothfeld; Monica Courtman; Jana Jones; and Greg McCaw. Well done by all!

This week’s Broker Blog covers the following topics: Community Involvement; The Mortgage Market; Surfing and Selling; Property Website Stats; and Closings for the Week.

I’m always inspired by the amount of time, effort and money that our agents, and other agents in the industry, give to the non-profits in our communities. We are truly involved people – from Little League coaching, to Scout mastering, to Relays for Life, our local schools – the list is virtually endless. I have to give my wife, Diane Krause, a complement for her months of hard work on “Wet Paint”, the major fundraiser for the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. It happens this Saturday night – so good luck Sweetheart – I know it will be great.

One of my pet non-profits is “California Poets in the Schools”. Their mission is to see that our young people get exposed to poets and the fun and pleasure that this ages old art brings. I recently got a thank you note for my modest contribution and it contained this poem:

Poetry

Poetry is life
rapping when thunder howls.
Poetry is the roots of stone
where I emerge. Poetry is
the footprints that follow me
on my journey home.
Poetry is the stars I see at night;
the peace and terror I cannot run from.
Poetry is the song in my heart,
the dance in my soul.

Luke Morrison, 5th grade
Neil Cummins School – Marin County

That will keep me as a supporter!

The Mortgage Market: Certainly, this is the story of the week. Front page headlines like “Mortgage Crunch”, and “Credit Fears Hit Dow Hard”, can't help but catch our attention. Personally, I’ve been waiting for someone to report the losses that we see being experienced as the REOs “close out” up to 20% of the loan asset in foreclosure. I’ve been waiting for someone to say “ouch”! Finally, now, we’re starting to hear the ouches – big ones. Banks in Germany, France, Denmark and Australia – hedge funds in both the US and abroad – are freezing customer access to pooled mortgage backed securities funds because they “can’t determine the value” of those funds.

So are they lining up to buy more MBS pools and CMOs? I don’t think so – and thus the liquidity problem. I’ve heard that solid lenders like Countrywide and WFHM have taken $100,000,000 mortgage pools to the market as recently as last Friday and what did they find – no buyers. So they have to hold those loan pools for now and that means they have less reserves with which to fund their current loans in the pipeline.

Fortunately, these lenders are also banks and can access needed liquidity through the Federal Reserve Bank. That’s why the President says that there is amble liquidity in the market – and ironically, mortgage rates are down. However, mortgage banks with institutional warehouse lines don’t have the same access to federal funds and when the warehouse is full and the investors won’t take product out, or provide more capital, even good mortgage bankers, like American Home Mortgage, can be forced out of business.

We had one borrower with a loan commitment from AHM that was scheduled to close last week when AHM announced that they were shutting down. No funds. Now what? Loan contingency removed but lender fails to fund – who is responsible? Can the seller say “cancel the escrow and I’ll take the liquidated damages and resell the house”? We don’t think so, but we’d rather not have to find out. One savvy buyer is asking us to write in the contract that the loan approval will be obtained in 17 days, but the loan contingency will remain in place until “funding”. This may become a popular mantra for buyers, and sellers are going to have to deal with it.

Everyone in the mortgage business that I have spoken to in the last couple of weeks say several things will surely happen: 1) Underwriting will get tougher and documentation more demanding; 2) There will be few, if any, “stated, stated” loans – and certainly not 100% LTV ones; 3) It’s going to be a dicey period – probably six to twelve months in duration and we may emerge from this time with only a handful of national lenders – the rest will be absorbed and consolidated into the larger institutions.

In the late seventies, when the secondary mortgage market was an infant compared to what it is now, and there was no branch banking, when depositors took there money out of the S & Ls we had “disintermediation”. We tried to entice individuals to put the money back in our banks by offering them toasters and blenders so we would have money for mortgage loans. Today, the secondary mortgage market is smooth and global, but it is experiencing a big hiccup and, I believe, there will be some fundamental changes to it and the mortgage industry in the next twelve months.

I know that my strategy will be to suggest our clients work with established, larger lenders with secure sources of funds. I can’t trust that Uncle Charley, the mortgage guy, will be able to fund our client's loan.

Surfing and Selling: Second Installment: Robert Graham is the Principal of GrahamComm (www.grahamcomm.net), a consulting and training company that helps clients increase their sales and deliver outstanding presentations. He can be reached at 415-652-0763 or Robert@grahamcomm.net. Robert has a monthly newsletter on his website “Speaking and Sales Success” and he recently wrote a piece on seven things he discovered in common between surfing and selling. I’m going to include one of his points in each of my next seven blog postings. Point # 2:

Use the right equipment. Nobody was catching the really big waves at Mavericks until they started towing people in behind jet skis. I only surf on long boards, as they are easier. You don't want to surf in cold water without a wetsuit.

Selling lesson: Be prepared. Have the right CRM (Customer Relation Management) system, sales tracking system, headset and technology at your disposal to be an efficient selling machine.

Property Website Stats: Do you review your Property Website Stats (and MLS visit and lockbox visit stats) so you can report to your sellers how many eyeballs were on there property last week? If you send an e-Flyer – do you monitor your stats to see if there is a spike in visits and if your efforts were productive? You can get to your website stats by following Lourde’s instructions below:

“Each website, both agent and property, comes with its own site specific set of web stats. The stats are stored on the website in a password protected directory. Each website has its own unique login and password which is assigned when the website was created. We have established a standard naming convention for assigning the passwords so it should be relatively easy for the agents to figure out what they are once they are familiar with how they are assigned. They can also request this information from Allyson or Susie.

The link for the stats is: https://insert domain name here/plesk-stat/webstat/

Just replace “insert domain name here” with the website address and enter the login and password when prompted.

Agents can also access their agent website stats directly from the link in their control panel”.   Again, call Ally or Susie with any questions and let’s keep our sellers informed.

Weekly Closings: Congratulations to all agents on a great month of July for the Wine Country Group. Our closed units were up 51% and our dollar volume was up 70% over July, 2006. The Sonoma office (+237%) and Napa office (+193%) were bellweathers. Congratulations to the following agents for closings during the week of 7/30 to 8/3: Tiffany Knef; Daniel Casabonne; Steve Tarantino; Debby Hendershot; Joyce Davison; Susan Irvine; Lisa Albertson; Holly Lee; Sheila Kelly; John Scott; and congratulations, congratulations to Bill Streett and Doug Del Fava and Susan Parker for two closings each during the past week. Great work by all!

This week’s Broker Blog covers the following topics: Risk Management; Surfing and Selling; Market Conditions; and Closings for the Week.

But first, I recently returned from a reunion of my wife’s cousins in north Minnesota farming country. The families come from predominantly Swedish, Welsh and Irish heritage. As Diane says, when they came across the country, or through the Great Lakes, and found country that looked like home, they settled. Anyway, I came home with the following Swedish Proverb that I like: “God gives every bird his worm, but he doesn’t throw it into the nest”. The analogy in the real estate sales world is: “There are sales out there, but they don’t drop into your lap.”

Risk Management: In the recent Realtor Magazine, the following points are made to avoid claims of misrepresentation:
1. Disclose all material adverse conditions. The crux of this statement is the definition of “material”. The suggestion is to ask yourself whether buyers would be interested in the property if they knew about the condition or whether it would affect the sales price they’d be willing to pay. Our risk reduction attorney goes by the mantra: “Disclose, disclose, disclose”. We are currently dealing with a situation where it appears that the seller, our client, failed to disclose to us and the buyer (also our client) material facts that the buyer discovered after the close of escrow. The “fix” is looking like it may be $25,000 to $30,000. Batten down the hatches!

2. Don’t discuss what you don’t know. In other words, don’t guess. Direct the client to sources for them to gain answers to the questions that they may have.

3. Clients should complete their own transfer disclosure statements. If they have questions of a legal nature, refer them to an attorney.

4. Don’t tell buyers or sellers what to do with a property. Provide known facts and market information so that buyers and sellers can make their own decisions. Refer questions about issues like zoning, school districts, floodplains, etc., to authoritative sources.

5. It’s best not to order or interpret inspection and pest reports. If you arrange for inspections as an accommodation to clients, have the billing and original reports sent to your clients lest you be seen as “owning” the reports. Don’t orally explain reports, give the clients copies of the reports and access to the inspectors.

These are broad suggestions, so if you have a specific question or questions, speak to your manager.

Surfing and Selling: Robert Graham is the Principal of GrahamComm (www.grahamcomm.net), a consulting and training company that helps clients increase their sales and deliver outstanding presentations. He can be reached at 415-652-0763 or Robert@grahamcomm.net. Robert has a monthly newsletter on his website “Speaking and Sales Success” and he recently wrote a piece on seven things he discovered in common between surfing and selling. I’m going to include one of his points in each of my next seven blog postings. Point # 1:

Go to where the waves are right for you.
Sayulita has warm water and small, slow waves, perfect for a hack like myself. I have no business paddling out in big surf and don't really want to spend hours in 54-degree water.

Selling lesson: Position yourself in an industry and company that fits your personality, aptitude and skill-set. The best sales skills won’t get you far if you are in the wrong place.

Market Conditions: According to the just released “Trends/July 2007” from CAR, Northern Wine Country (Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties) remains the area in the state with the lowest supply of unsold inventory of detached homes. Here is a sampling:
    Northern Wine Country:        2.0 mo. supply
    San Francisco Bay:               3.7 mo.
    Sacramento:                       5.9 mo.
    California totals:                 10.7 mo.
and on the other extreme:
    Central Valley (nic Sacramento): 15.0 mo.
    Orange County:                        19.8 mo.

Do you have a 2 to 4 unit property to sell? Do you have a client who wants to buy a 2 to 4 unit property? Visit www.2-4units.com. I’ve never tried it, but maybe it’s worth a try!

Weekly Closings: Congratulations to the following for closings during the week of 723/ to 7/27: Diane Krause; Frank Trozzo; Rico Ruthnick; Erin George; Deke DeKay and Diane Harris; Robyn Makaruk; Diana Tate; Jose Saldana; Felice Torri; Julianne Anshutz; Daniel Casabonne; Penelope La Montagne. Mechel Boucher in Healdsburg double ended his own listing in Cloverdale. Great work by all!

Before getting into the exciting new FHA-WCG e-Marketing initiative, I'd like to give equal billing to our daughter Sophie, as I did with our son Andrew a couple of blog editions ago (see 6/25/07 posting).

In September, Sophie will begin attendance at the University of California - Santa Cruz. She is planning to study Marine Biology with an emphasis on tropical oceans. It sounds good to me - we're planning to visit her in Barbados down the road. In any case, we attended Student/Parent Orientation this week. The first speaker had the following counsel to the new students with regard to their upcoming counseling sessions: "Don't be timid; and don't be impatient."

I immediately thought that this is highly appropriate counsel to real estate sales agents. We can't be timid in our search for new business, but we can't be impatient with the process either. I kind of like restating the counsel as follows: "Be courageous; Be tolerant and understanding." Either way, it's a go for me.

FHA-WCG introduces new e-Marketing initiative: We are pleased to introduce a new program in cooperation with iAnnex.com. iAnnex is a database aggregator that sends e-Flyers to other real estate agents throughout the area and state. This is a business to business marketing initiative to spread word about our FHA-WCG listings. As a member of four different MLSs and a commercial marketing network, I get about twenty of these "e-blasts" per day. I find that I scan the subject line, and if it sounds interesting, I open the flyer. The thing that I've never liked is the inconsistent presentation of the photos and info. In cooperation with iAnnex, Lourdes developed three beautiful templates that are consistent with our branding and brand positioning. Please visit e-Flyer to view the templates and the simple directions to get started.

I believe there are two important keys to your success with this program. 1. Choose your subject line with great care and creativity - it is the key to whether other agents will even look at your flyer. 2. If you receive a request to "opt out" of the e-mail program, please forward that to both Susie and me so that we can see that iAnnex handles the request properly and deletes the individual from their database.

Good luck with this new program, and let me know what kind of response you receive.

Market Statistics: For the first six months of 2007, Frank Howard Allen Realtors is the leading real estate company in the North Bay in both Dollar Volume and Units sold. Congratulations to the over 500 sales agents that make up the Frank Howard Allen family.

Green Homeowners are Happy: According to a survey by the National Association of Home Builders and McGraw-Hill Construction, 85% of respondents are more satisfied with their green homes than with their previous , more traditionally built home. In addition, 63% of buyers are motivated by the lower operating and maintenance costs that are associated with energy and resource efficient homes.

Along these lines, Diane and I are submitting an application to be part of the pilot program for LEED (Leader in Energy Efficient Design) certification for a home that we are planning to build in The Sea Ranch. I believe that within the next decade, LEED certification will be a common yardstick that we use in presenting homes to the public. A LEED platinum certificate home will carry a premium over a LEED silver certificate home. We will all be learning about these new ideas and programs in the near future.

And further along these lines, congratulations to our Healdsburg agent, Carol Lexa, for earning a designation as an "EcoBroker". Carol went through a training program on the energy and environmental issues that affect real estate transactions in order to earn her designation. For more information, you can visit www.ecobroker.com or call Carol at 707-473-3456.

Closings for the period 7/2/07 to 7/13/07: Congratulations to the following agents for closings over the past two weeks: Felice Torri; Diane Litchfield; Regina Gibson; Joyce Davison; Erick Rothfeld; Mari Johnson; Gunter Pirchner; Tish Thames; and Kendra Martin. Robyn Makaruk double ended one transaction and Pat Brown and Deke DeKay and Diane Harris all had two closings over this period. Daniel Casabonne and Cheri Stanley were the tops for this period with four closings each! Well done by all.

It's a busy time of year. Don't forget to schedule time for yourself and with your friends and family. Be well.

Hoping you had a Happy 4th of July!

In early June, CAR released its Mid-Year Forecast Update reporting revisions to its Annual Forecast published in 10/06. Excerpts follow: "In light of recent and anticipated conditions, the outlook for sales in 2007 v. 2006 was revised downward from an expected 7 percent decline to a 14% decline (this compares to a 23.6% decline in sales for 2006 v. 2005). Year to year percentage changes in sales should become smaller in the remaining months of the year."

"The outlook for the median price was revised upward from an original 2 percent decline to a revised 1.8 percent annual gain (2006 v. 2005 was a 6.2% increase)."

"The economy was to blame for the extended duration of weakness in the California housing market during the early to mid 1990s, but it is not the culprit now. Low affordability and tight credit standards are constraining activity, particularly in lower priced, entry-level markets. Any turnaround in sales will require significant improvements in affordability. With mortgage rates expected to hold steady and no significant declines anticipated in home prices, affordability relief is not yet in sight."

FHA_WCG listing e-marketing: We are completing our branded e-marketing program in cooperation with e-Annex. You will soon be able to send attractive and affordable FHA-WCG branded e-flyers to e-Annex's databases of real estate agents around the north bay and throughout the entire state. Stay tuned for the launch in the next week or two. Thanks to Lourdes Sodari for her hard work on this project.

Unmatched Local Expertise: Keep an eye out for the following new marketing campaign for FHA-WCG:
Unmatched Local Expertise

• 20+ local offices
• 500+ professional agents
• 97 years of experience
• 5 straight years as North Bay Biz Reader's poll "Best Real Estate Company"

Peter Rodgers, Director of Marketing for the “core company” gave a great presentation today in our combined Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley sales meeting. He will be doing a follow-up session for our Healdsburg, Windsor and Cloverdale agents in the near future, so plan to attend in Healdsburg if you didn’t make it this morning – we will advise you of the date.

Peter’s presentation covered new pdf documents that are available to support your client presentations, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World and Luxury Portfolio matters and a new Powerpoint presentation available to agents who want to present themselves and their listing/sales capabilities digitally.

PDF support documents: Peter has created highly professional documents as pdf files for our use. The documents relate to a “Signature Service” checklist that sets us apart from our competition; A “History Timeline” of our 97 year old firm; A “Giving to the Community” document that highlights many of our community contributions, etc. We will be branding these with our Wine Country Group brand and posting on our Intranet along with our other pdf CMA materials in the Intranet File Cabinet. In the meantime, you can print the forms directly from the www.fhallen.com website under the “Why Us” block and the appropriate page for which you are looking. Call me or Susie if you have any questions.

LeadingRE and Luxury Portfolio: There are over 700 top independent brokers in 35 countries who are members of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World. LeadingRE brokerages sell over 1.3 million homes per year with a value exceeding $400 billion – more than any other real estate company or network. Visit www.leadingre.com for more info.

Luxury Portfolio membership is made up of 200 of the top 700 firms that are members of LeadingRE. Frank Howard Allen Realtors and FHA-WCG are members of Luxury Portfolio. As such, our luxury residential listings with a value in excess of $1M are automatically picked up from our MLS and entered into the Luxury Portfolio award winning website: www.luxuryportfolio.com. Here’s the great part. We can enhance the photos and text on the LP website to better attract web searches for real estate. We can also submit our properties for inclusion on the front page of the LP website and for inclusion in the LP high end magazine ads (Town & Country, Departures, etc.) In addition, we get access to inexpensive ads in regional and international editions of The Wall Street Journal, Ultimate Homes, DuPont Registry and other publications.

Luxury Portfolio also has an on-line magazine (Luxe Trends) to which we can submit articles and a Luxe Blog where you can dialogue about luxury real estate. Interestingly, LP is the only real estate website that can be read in five different languages and which can translate real estate prices into 22 different currencies.

There are a lot of administrative features, like posting your own ads, tracking web statistics on your listings, enhancing your listings, etc.

For both Leading RE and Luxury Portfolio, we are virtually the exclusive member in our market areas. Call Susie for more details about this great marketing vehicle.

Locations for commercials: Along the luxury real estate front, Gina Corsi-Gutierrez in our Napa office passes along the following “Location Scout”: Jim Baldwin, www.baldwinproductions.com. There’s not much money in this for us or our client, but we can make nice PR out of being a photo shoot location for an L. L. Bean or Williams-Sonoma ad. Thanks, Gina, for the information.

Bull’s-eye Sales Training: Following closely on the heels of the Contract Training that begins this week, the next series of Bull’s-eye Sales Training (previously referred to as “Real Estate Boot Camp”) begins on Tuesday, June 26. This excellent sales training runs for 8 consecutive weeks from 1:30 to 3:30 in Frank Howard Allen’s San Rafael office. It is limited to the first fifty who sign up, so let me or your manager know asap if you are planning to attend – the last session was overbooked. I have a detailed itinerary of the training if you would like me to send you a copy.

Diversity Training: Frank Howard Allen also does periodic Diversity Training in cooperation with First American Title Company. Let me know if you like to attend a future training and I’ll get you more info.

Weekly Closings: Congratulations to the following for closings during the week of 6/4 to 6/9: Constance Sharpe; Hank Lane; Daniel Casabonne; Kip Zook and Jose Saldana. Great work!

At a CRB luncheon today in Sacramento, Bill Jansen, Esq., presented "the latest" hot topics in Realtor risk reduction.

Negligent Referral: The case is a third party exchange company that closed it's doors and disappeared with $125,000,000 in exchange escrow funds. A sixty four year old widowed woman's net worth was tied up in an exchange and totally lost. Her attorney asked: "who recommended the exchange company to her". She responded: "my Realtor". You can see where this is going.

Safe practice is to recommend three vendors for any activity, be sure that the client understands the referral and makes the final decision and when you don't have a specific referral, recommend a larger, established company that is not likely to close its doors overnight.

Home Equity Act Issues: Major penalties against agents and their brokers if the represent investor purchasers of owner occupied, single family/1 to 4 units, with NOD filed prior to closing. Buyer's agent may accept a referral fee from the Listing agent, but can not represent the buyer. Only the buyer themselves, or an attorney, can represent the buyer. CAR has new forms HEAA & DBA to cancel agency and representation. Call me or your manager if this situation arises in any of your transactions.

More Short Sale Matters: Consider using a Short Sale Listing Addendum when there is the possibility for a short sale.

If you know you have a short sale when you list the property it is one of the times when you can place a conditional offer of compensation in the MLS confidential remarks as follows: "If short sale occurs, commissions shall be split 50-50 between the listing and selling offices". This eliminates your listing side being wiped out in the short sale.

If you are using Property Profiles from title companies to screen your listings for NODs, be aware that most title companies do not include a search for NODs in their standard property profiles, but may do so under special request. This area is a problem for them as well and they are working on solutions.

The New Agent Visual Inspection Disclosure (CAR-AVID) - USE THIS FORM! Effective with all open escrows, I'm asking that this new CAR form be completed by all agents in order to complete the file. This will be one of the forms that will trigger the holding of your check if we don't have it in file, fully acknowledged by all parties. On the normal TDS form - write in: "See Attached form: CAR-AVID".

Also, complete all sections of the form. If you see nothing in a particular area, state: "Nothing noted", or put a dash or N/A.

Also, on the RETDS, page 1, Section I., we recommend that you counsel your sellers to check the two boxes under "Substituted Disclosures" and to provide any existing reports/disclosures under the second box.

Closings for the week of 5/28 to 6/01: A busy week, Lori is happy. Congratulations to the following for closings last week: Mari Johnson; Jana Jones; Steve and Marla Ericson; Tish Thames; Debbie Hendershot; Tammy Owens; Kip Zook; Beth Bruno; Rose Donner; Monica Courtman and Erin George. And a special, only happens once in your life, congratulation cheers to Kaeti Bailie who closed her first transaction as a real estate agent. Many more to come!

We've had two recent escrows (each in excess of $2,000,000) collapse over matters relating to the Williamson Act.  Both properties were covered by Williamson Act contracts which enables land to be preserved for agricultural use and receive tax benefits in exchange.  In the past couple of years, the state's enforcement of the specific terms of the Williamson Act contracts has intensified leading to "audits" of the contracts in Sonoma County, and perhaps elsewhere, and lawsuits relating to WA properties.  If you are dealing with a property as either a listing or selling agent and the property is subject to a WA contract, please review it carefully with your manager to see that full disclosure is made and full understanding is obtained.

In connection with land deals, I was recently referred to an interesting web site:  http://www.dirtlawyer.com  It has a great deal of links relating to land and legal matters - check it out and put it on your bookmarks.

Speaking of bookmarks, the Broker Blog can now be found as a handy link on the FHA-WCG intranet site - so check it out anytime.

Contract Training:  I believe that you may have all heard about the latest session of Contract Training that begins on 6/15 in San Rafael.  Keep in mind that topics other than contracts are covered.  You might want to do a refresher on "Ethics/Procuring Cause" or "Presenting your Offer", or "Risk Management and Home Warranties".  You can drop in on these individual classes, just let your manager know so we can coordinate with the FHA trainers and management team.

FHA Ranked #73 on Power Broker Report:  We can all be proud of the fact that out of an estimated 300,000 real estate firms in the country, Frank Howard Allen Realtors ranks #73 in Sales Ranking.  That's good stuff!

Economic Outlook for Sonoma County:  An economic outlook was presented this morning in conjunction with Sonoma State University.  It was a broad presentation with meaningful data and forecasts relating to our entire wine country/north bay region and with excellent specifics relating to residential real estate.  View the content of the outlook at http://www.sonoma-county.org/edb/pdf/2007/20070531msaa1.pdf.

Your Own Blog:  I never set out to have a Broker Blog, but now I like it.  Keep comments coming - they are published to each posting as they come in.  FHA-Reach makes it really, really simple to create a blog.  Just log-on to FHA-Reach (button on our Intranet) and go to Compose - Blogs.   You can name your blog and be in business in ten minutes.  Keep your clients informed on you own Agent Blog.  Call me or Susie if you need any help.

Closings for the Week of 5/21 to 5/25:

Congratulations for closings to:  Herb Heil, Cherie Stanley, Pat Brown and Corrie Sterbentz (dual ends) and to Ron and Jane Pavelka who had two sides close last week.  Looking forward to a busy end of the month and a really busy June.

Updates coming:  We have an update "refresher" coming to the FHA-WCG website in mid-June and an e-Flyer program within a few weeks.  Stay tuned for specifics regarding these great upgrades.

Talk to you soon.

Some of you will find some very interesting real estate data in the just released report from the Sonoma State Economics Development Board.  The report is called the Spring Business Barometer for Sonoma County and can be found at the following link:  http://www.sonoma-county.org/edb/pdf/2007/2007_q1_business_barometer.pdf.

You may have noticed the TrendGraphix report 3 over the years carried a bar graph of "Sales Price to List Price".  This has always been calculated on the Sales Price to the last list price and not to the original list price.  I suggested to TrendGraphix that the current graph wasn't very useful and they agreed.  So now, you have the option of looking at the ratio of the Sales Price to the last list price or the original list price. 

The difference is important.  For Sonoma County, the SP to LLP has been in the 98-99% range, however, for the SP to OLP, is in the range of 92%-95%.  For Napa County it is 96-97% compared to 88-92%.  These are significant differences that can be pointed out to sellers for any of the individual markets that you want to research.

Managers and administrators also have the ability to search individual brokerages, offices or agents based on their SP/OLP performance.  For instance, among the major competitors in Napa County, FHA-WCG ranks 2nd in SP/OLP performance at 95.2%.  Cherie Stanley, as an individual agent, performs at a 98.7% SP/OLP ratio compared to Jill Levy, the number one producing agent in Napa County, who performs at a 95% ratio.  I believe that that makes nice listing presentation material.

Let me or your manager know if you want some of these more specific details.

Luxury Portfolio - We have heard that some agents are ordering Luxury Portfolio flyers before their listing is fully qualified for Luxury Portfolio designation.  Please observe the following criteria for Luxury Portfolio properties:

1.  Priced at $1M or more - residential listings only, no land listings or "land heavy" listings with marginal residences

2.  A minimum of five (5) good quality, high resolution photos.  Floor plans can be added after five photos, but not substitute for photos

3.  Under construction and pre-construction are okay with high quality architectural renderings - check with Susie

4.  Grammatically correct ad copy and a detailed property description

Please don't order LP flyers, or promise LP designation to your owner until you have met the above criteria and have no questions about the property's qualification.  Thanks.

Sales for the past week:  Congratulations to Kendra Martin, Sargum Griffen, Kip Zook, Frank Trozzo, Jerry Roach and Felice Torri for closings last week.  Further congratulations to Robyn Makaruk and Barbara Sommerville cooperating on a double ended transaction and Jose Saldana and Erick Rothfeld also cooperating on a double ended transaction.  Well done by all.

Finally, we will be adding a button for the Broker Blog on the FHA-WCG intranet website to make it easier for you to access the blog.  I'll let you know when it is up and running.

Comments are always welcome - click below.  Have a great and safe Memorial Day weekend.

Hello all - there has been quite a industry "buzz" regarding the 60 Minutes segment about the real estate industry that aired a week ago, Sunday. NAR sent a letter of response that can be viewed at: www.realtor.org/about_nar/NAR_letter_to_60_minutes.html

A letter from the president of Realogy Group's franchise group (Coldwell Banker, C-21, Realty Executives, Sotheby's, etc.) follows:

May 16, 2007
Jeff Fager
Executive Producer
CBS News "60 Minutes"
555 West 57th, 9th Floor
New York, NY. 10019
Dear Mr. Fager:

Your story on the real estate industry that aired on May 13th had more holes than a leaky roof.

Putting aside the inaccuracies regarding "sacrosanct" commission rates, lack of industry oversight and state governments conspiring to stifle competition, the segment grossly oversimplified the complexity of buying and selling a property.

Real estate brokerage is a performance-based industry. Clearly, not all real estate companies are alike. Results will vary dramatically based on a variety of factors, including the experience and track record of the professional you select. Picking an agent to represent you based solely on discount, rebate, or other cash back scheme may seem like a good idea at first glance, but not always at the closing table when all is said and done.

The bottom line is that consumers have ample choice when deciding which real estate company and business model they prefer to represent them in a transaction. Competition is good for the consumer and the industry and is the basis of our free market economy. At the end of the day, the companies that offer the best value proposition to home buyers and sellers will prosper.

Respectfully,
Alex Perriello

Alex Perriello
President & CEO
Realogy Franchise Group

I haven't personally heard from any of our clients regarding the TV segment, but I echo Mr. Perriello's sentiments above - the service to the client is highly predicated on the skill, experience level and commitment of the agent and the agent's company. This ain't no "get rich quick" scheme - it's a lot of hard work and dedication. Thanks for all that you do at FHA-WCG to earn us our excellent reputation.

Please comment if you have any thoughts on this matter, and take a look at comments to previous blogs - they are quite interesting. Have a great week.